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Ripe Tomato Soy

A pickled tomato sauce made with tomatoes, onions, salt, vinegar, spices, brown sugar, and mustard seed.

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 ↓

Ripe Tomato Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Layer the tomatoes and onions in a large container, sprinkling salt between each layer.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours to drain off the liquid.

Cook

  1. Add vinegar, ground mustard, ground ginger, ground cloves, ground allspice, and cayenne pepper to the drained mixture.

  2. Stew the mixture slowly for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. When nearly done, stir in the 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 sauce and provide its main body and flavor.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body that softens during the long stew.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the tomatoes and onions, concentrating the mixture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, slightly bitter bite and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Drain the salted layers for 24 hours. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions by osmosis. Skipping or shortening this rest leaves excess liquid, which dilutes the sauce and prolongs the stew.

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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