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Pipe Tomato Soy

A pickled tomato and onion relish with vinegar, spices, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pipe Tomato Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and drain

  1. Layer tomatoes and onions alternately in a container and sprinkle with salt. Let stand for 24 hours.

  2. Drain off all the liquid.

Stew

  1. Add vinegar, ground mustard, ground ginger, ground cloves, ground allspice, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Stew slowly for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. 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.

  1. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the relish and soften into a juicy, saucy body as they stew.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and soft texture that holds the relish together.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the relish.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, slightly bitter bite and crunchy texture.
Ground mustard
Adds warm, sharp mustard flavor that blends into the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the brown sugar and mustard seed near the end. Sugar can scorch and caramelize harshly on the bottom of the pot during long stewing, so adding it late keeps the flavor clean. Mustard seed loses its sharp pungency with prolonged heat, so late addition keeps its bite.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  3. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, mustard, ginger, clove, allspice, pepper. 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).

“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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