Name: Pe Tomato Soy
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon mustard; 1 tablespoon ginger; 1 tablespoon cloves; 1 tablespoon allspice; 2 tablespoons cayenne pepper; coarse sea salt (to taste); 2¼ lbs brown sugar; ¼ lb mustard seed

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pe Tomato Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Sprinkle coarse sea salt over tomatoes and let them stand for 24 hours.
Drain the liquid from the tomatoes.
Add mustard, ginger, cloves, allspice, and cayenne pepper to the tomatoes.
Cook the mixture slowly for 2 to 3 hours.
When nearly done, stir in brown sugar and mustard seed.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,620 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,928 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, clove, allspice, pepper, sugar):

Carrotbetter flavor fit
Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit
Mustardthe original
Parsnipabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, clove, allspice, pepper, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).