Name: Cold Tomato Sauce
Ingredients: ½ peck ripe tomatoes; 1 cup sugar; salt to taste; 1 small cup white mustard seed; 4 tablespoons grated horseradish; 2 dozen stalks celery, chopped fine or ½ ounce celery seed; 2 tablespoons ground black pepper or 1 tablespoon each of black and red pepper; 1 quart strong cold vinegar

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

½ peck ripe tomatoes
1 cup sugar
salt to taste
1 small cup white mustard seed
4 tablespoons grated horseradish
2 dozen stalks celery, chopped fine or ½ ounce celery seed
2 tablespoons ground black pepper or 1 tablespoon each of black and red pepper
1 quart strong cold vinegar

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

Peel and drain the tomatoes through a colander for 24 hours.
Mash the tomatoes and add sugar and salt to taste.

Season and bottle

Stir in mustard seed, horseradish, chopped celery (or celery seed), and ground pepper.
Add the cold vinegar and stir well.
Bottle and seal the sauce.

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.

Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Horseradish + celerytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together835 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes: Form the bulk of the sauce, providing body and fresh tomato flavor.
Sugar: Balances the acidity of the tomatoes and vinegar with sweetness.
White mustard seed: Adds sharp, pungent heat that gives the sauce its bite.
Horseradish: Contributes pungent, sharp heat that stays vivid in a cold sauce.
Vinegar: Provides acidity that sharpens flavor and helps keep the sauce preserved.

The step that matters

Draining the tomatoes. Draining for a full 24 hours removes excess water, so the sauce stays thick rather than thin and watery once the cold vinegar and other ingredients are added.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, mustard, horseradish, celery, pepper, vinegar):

Beetrootfits better
Lettucefits better
Radishfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, mustard, horseradish, celery, pepper, 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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Cold Tomato Sauce