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Cold Tomato Relish

A chilled relish of tomatoes, onions, peppers, celery, and spices, preserved in vinegar and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cold Tomato Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onions, green peppers, celery, and red sweet peppers finely.

  2. Add ½ cup of coarse sea salt and let the mixture stand for several hours or overnight.

  3. Drain off the liquid.

Mix and seal

  1. Add the cider vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, and celery seed.

  2. Seal the mixture without cooking.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Supply the main bulk, moisture and fresh flavor of the relish.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the chopped vegetables, so the relish is less watery.
Cider vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavor and helps keep the relish stable.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that stands out against the sweet and sour base.

The step that matters

Draining after the salt rest. Salt draws liquid out of the chopped vegetables, and that liquid must be drained off before adding vinegar. If too much water stays in, the relish will be thin and diluted, and its flavor and keeping quality will suffer.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, celery, cider, vinegar, sugar, mustard. 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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