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Ripe Tomato Soy

A pickled tomato relish made with vinegar, mustard, ginger, cloves, allspice, cayenne pepper, sugar, and white 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 the tomatoes

  1. Combine tomatoes, onions, and salt in a bowl, then let stand for 24 hours.

  2. Drain off all liquid.

Cook and finish

  1. Add vinegar, mustard, ginger, cloves, allspice, and cayenne pepper; stir well.

  2. Stew slowly for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. When nearly done, add sugar and white mustard seed; mix thoroughly.

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 pickle and soften into a thick, spoonable body as they stew.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the tomatoes and onions during the 24-hour rest, concentrating their flavour.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the pickle and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the vinegar's sharpness and helps thicken the finished pickle.
White mustard seed
Adds a pungent, slightly bitter bite that lingers through the long simmer.

The step that matters

Drain off all liquid before cooking. Salt pulls a large amount of liquid from the tomatoes and onions. If that liquid is not drained, the pickle will be watery and the vinegar will be diluted, so it will not thicken or hold well.

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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