MOUEEL
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légumevert · confituré · herbeux · métallique · sulfureux

Tomate

Un fruit sur le papier, un aliment salé dans les faits. Le soleil fait le travail ; le frigo le défait.

on its own
3.0sour
2.0sweet
3.0savoury
1.0bitter
4.0umami
order · canon first

6 of these 145 are wild — theory says yes, nobody has cooked them. why →

145 pairings for Tomate.

Sel

classic

Salt pulls water and concentrates glutamate. A naked tomato is half a tomato.

Ail

classic

Raw, the sulfur reads as heat against the acid; cooked, it turns to sugar.

Sulfur bite against sweet-acid pulp. Slice it thin or it takes the plate over.

Cooked-sugar acid over fresh acid; the tomato reads riper than it actually is.

Bacon

classic

Acid and glutamate; the fruit does the seasoning the cure already started.

Pâtes

classic

Starch water and acid emulsify; the sauce grips instead of pooling.

Glutamate plus brine plus bitterness. Provence built a cuisine on it.

The olive supplies the salt the tomato has been asking for all summer.

Two glutamate sources plus vinegar. The juice stops tasting like breakfast.

Pesto

classic

Acid cuts the oil, glutamate props up the cheese. Summer in two moves.

Sliced and salted at the table so the juice stays in the fruit.

Glutamate

classic

Supplies the glutamate a January tomato never grew. Not subtle, still true.

Igname

common

Acid and glutamate season a root that brings almost none of either.

Pourpier

common

Two summer acids, one sweet and one sharp, same bowl.

Oignon

common

Acid and sugar, softened together until neither is raw.

Slow-cooked together till the beans give up. Acid keeps them green enough.

Avocat

common

Acid and glutamate on one side, fat on the other. The oldest split in the taco.

Sweet acid against brine, and those two textures are the only contrast the salad has.

Maxixe

common

Acid and sweetness cover the bitterness the skin never fully loses.

Persil

common

Shared hexenal green. Parsley does what basil does with less perfume.

Thym

common

Slow-roasted tomato needs a dry herb, not a fresh green one. This is it.

Softer than oregano, so it works on fresh tomato where oregano bullies.

Laurier

common

Acid strips fat, bay keeps a long tomato sauce from tasting one-dimensional.

Livèche

common

Glutamate under a celery-musk leaf reads as long-cooked when it is not.

Acid and glutamate give the bitterness a base to stand on rather than float.

Acid plus heat; the pepper stops the sugar reading as jam.

Acid and sugar make the burn measurable rather than just loud.

Same fruit sugars, same faint acidity. It reads as more tomato.

Shared glutamate and acid; the chilli supplies the dried half of the fruit.

Chipotle

common

Adobo in one line: acid, sugar, smoke, and a chilli soft enough to blend.

Shared acid and lycopene. The chilli deepens the colour, not the heat.

Paprika

common

Same fruit family, one fresh and one dried. Depth without more acid.

Cumin

common

Acid lifts the musk so it reads as warm rather than heavy.

Sweet seed against acid fruit; the sauce stops needing added sugar.

Fenugrec

common

Acid stops the burnt-sugar note tipping over into medicine.

Ketchup's hidden spice. Without it the sauce is just sweet vinegar.

Za’atar

common

Raw slices and a heavy scatter; the acid in the blend doubles the fruit.

Baharat

common

Acid pulls the pepper forward and pushes the sweet phenols underneath.

Acid lifts the cardamom and keeps the clove from turning anaesthetic.

Acid cuts the fetid edge and leaves a savoury depth nothing else supplies.

Berbéré

common

Acid and sugar give a very long chilli something to land on early.

Fresh acid over dried fruit sugar; the flake reads as the tomato cooked down.

’Nduja

common

Acid and glutamate stretch the fat into a sauce rather than a slick.

Lardo

common

Acid is the only brake on pure fat. Ripe tomato applies it fastest.

Bonite

common

Basque stew logic: acid and glutamate under a very oily fish.

Sardine

common

Acid and glutamate: the tin’s other liquid, and the better one.

Acid rehydrates flavour the salt flattened out.

Bar

common

Acid, salt and glutamate for a fillet that brings only texture.

Vivaneau

common

Veracruz: acid, olive and caper over a fish that runs sweet.

Lotte

common

Acid keeps a meaty fish from reading heavy in a stew.

Crevette

common

Prawn sweetness plus glutamate. The sauce tastes long before it is.

Shells roasted with tomato paste build the only stock worth the work.

Labneh

common

Glutamate plus lactic acid makes the tomato taste more like tomato.

Ricotta

common

Glutamate does the seasoning the cheese refuses to do for itself.

Glutamate and salt, doing the job the curd will not do itself.

Halloumi

common

Acid and glutamate against brine. Char both on the same griddle.

Cheddar

common

Acid and glutamate. The toastie is a tomato delivery system.

The curd has no salt to spare. Let the fruit season it and let the fruit acid do the cutting.

Cooked tomato brings the salt and the acid this spread refuses to bring for itself.

Boulgour

common

Its juice is the cooking liquid. Salt the tomato first, then let it drain in.

Farro

common

Acid keeps the chew from reading as stodge.

Chapelure

common

Stuffed and baked, the crumb drinks the juice and keeps the top dry.

Acid plus glutamate; the pea supplies bulk and takes the flavour on loan.

Acid and glutamate; the dal goes from beige to a dish that ends somewhere.

Acid to cut the fat you just added. Charred, not raw.

The pulse has no acid; the tomato has nothing but. Straight trade.

Enough acid to stop the sweetness turning into pudding.

Acid the pot does not otherwise contain; cooked down until it stops tasting raw.

Câpres

common

Glutamate wants salt, and capers deliver it with a floral note attached.

Acid on acid sounds wrong and reads as ripeness. Panzanella depends on it.

Garum

common

Free glutamate stacked on free glutamate. A drop replaces a whole anchovy.

Zhoug

common

Glutamate and water under raw green heat. The sauce needs something sweet.

Confit it slowly: the oil carries lycopene out and gives nothing back.

Sucre

common

A pinch in the sauce is not for sweetness. It corrects the tin, not the fruit.

Capucine

common

The heat sits where black pepper would, and the petal brings acid tolerance with it.

Sel fumé

common

Roast them hard first; the smoke lands as chipotle without the chilli.

Fumée

common

Smoke a ripe jalapeño and you get chipotle. Do it to tomato and see.

Low-acid modern varieties will not can safely. This puts the pH back down.

Estragon

uncommon

Anise against tomato acid does what basil does, colder and more adult.

Citron noir

uncommon

Acid on acid, but the musty half stops the pot tasting like a stew of juice.

Katsuobushi

uncommon

Inosinate onto tomato glutamate. Flakes make a raw tomato taste cooked.

Kombu

uncommon

Two glutamates from different oceans. Kombu-cured tomato reads as meat.

Cis-3-hexenal on both sides. The seed makes the fruit taste greener, not nuttier.

Nuoc-mâm

uncommon

Two glutamate bombs. A splash reads as anchovy, never as fish.

Dashi, rice vinegar, tomato: a cold savoury broth with no stock at all.

It does what celery salt and lemon do in a Bloody Mary, in a single pour.

Sambal

uncommon

Glutamate under raw heat. Sambal tomat is a hot sauce that tastes cooked.

Ponzu

uncommon

Two glutamate sources plus acid. Chilled tomato in ponzu is a Japanese salad.

Dashi

uncommon

Two glutamate sources. Chilled with tomato it reads as savoury consomme.

Fry the base until the oil floats clear on top. That layer is how you know it is done.

Sucre roux

uncommon

Glutamate under molasses is the entire skeleton of every barbecue sauce.

Fraise

rare

Both run on cis-3-hexenal. The tomato brings salt-hunger, the berry answers it.

Pêche

rare

Same sweet-green edge. Salt and oil push the peach onto the savoury side.

Identical green volatiles, opposite sugar. Salt them both and nobody can tell.

Vanillin softens the metallic edge; this is how tomato becomes a dessert.

Raw slices, salt, nigella. The seed does what a caper would in Sicily.

Dulse

rare

The vegan BLT premise: fried dulse, tomato acid, mayonnaise. It works.

Tucupi

rare

Two sour things that have never met, and the fruit gives the broth the body it lacks.

Clarify the water, set it clear. The colour goes, the flavour does not.

Agar clarification: set the pulp, freeze, thaw, and clear water drips out.

Roast them with a grating and the hay note reads as the vine they hung on.

Oursin

wild

Glutamate both sides; uni glycine is the sweet edge. Raw tomato water, cold uni. Raw tomato water, cold uni.

Wakame

wild

Glutamate on glutamate. Wakame-dressed tomato reads as a cooked dish, cold.

Cacao

wild

Shared pyrazines and acid; a dust in the sauce reads as slow-cooked, not sweet.

Both red, both acid-and-bitter. A drop in the sauce does what anchovy does.

Kirsch

wild

Both carry benzaldehyde traces; a few drops in the sauce reads as depth, not fruit.