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Tomato Pickles

A pickled tomato, pepper, and onion mixture seasoned with salt, sugar, vinegar, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle the salt over the tomatoes, peppers, and onions.

  2. Let them stand overnight.

  3. In the morning, pour off the water.

Cook and pack

  1. Boil the vegetables in a kettle with enough vinegar to cover them.

  2. Add the sugar, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and horseradish.

  3. Cook until soft.

  4. Pack the mixture into stone jars.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and soften into a tender, sliceable texture when cooked.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables overnight, firming them and concentrating flavor before pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle while the vegetables cook in it.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness and helps round out the spiced flavor.
Whole cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Pour off the water after salting. Salt draws a large amount of water out of the vegetables overnight. Discarding that liquid before boiling keeps the pickle from being diluted and helps it firm up rather than turn watery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, cinnamon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, cinnamon. 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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