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Sauce

Tomato Mustard

A tomato-based condiment made with peppers, spices, vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 ↓

Tomato Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove stalks from the tomatoes and boil them with the red peppers for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander.

  3. Add the salt, black pepper, ginger, allspice, mace, cloves, garlic, and onions to the strained mixture and boil for another hour.

  4. Once cooled, stir in the vinegar, red pepper, and mustard.

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. Allspice + clovetop 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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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 sauce, providing body, moisture and a fresh acidic base.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body as they soften during the long boil.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and preserves the sauce.
Mustard
Contributes pungent flavor and sharpness to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the vinegar, red pepper, and mustard after cooling. Vinegar is volatile and its sharp acidity fades with prolonged heat, and mustard's pungency is driven by compounds that weaken when boiled. Adding them once the sauce has cooled keeps the bite bright.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, ginger, allspice, clove, garlic, onion. 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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