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Tomato Soy

A preserved tomato condiment made by salting, washing, and boiling tomatoes with onions, mustard, pepper, allspice, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,928 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Tomato Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle sliced tomatoes with coarse sea salt and let stand for 24 hours.

  2. Wash off the salt and drain the tomatoes.

Cook

  1. Add sliced onions, dry mustard, white mustard seed, black pepper, and allspice.

  2. Cover with vinegar and boil until thick like jam, about 2 hours.

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.

  1. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the condiment and, after salting, a firm texture that holds up to long cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the sliced tomatoes, firming them and reducing the liquid that must cook off.
Onions
Add sweetness and body that thickens into the jam-like texture as the mixture reduces.
White mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during the long simmer.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the condiment and brightens its flavour.

The step that matters

Boil until thick like jam. Long boiling evaporates water and lets the pectin and sugars in the tomatoes and onions thicken the mixture. Stopping too early leaves it runny and less stable for storage.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, mustard, pepper, allspice, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, mustard, pepper, allspice, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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