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Dessert

Ripe Tomato Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made from ripe tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, and cloves, simmered and stored.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,474 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Ripe Tomato Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Place tomatoes in cold water.

  2. Bring the water to a simmer until the skin splits.

  3. Remove tomatoes from hot water.

  4. Pour cold water over the tomatoes until completely cold.

Pickle

  1. Transfer the tomatoes to a jar.

  2. Boil vinegar, sugar, and cloves together.

  3. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the tomatoes.

  4. Let the mixture stand for three days.

Cook and store

  1. Pour the contents of the jar into a kettle.

  2. Boil for fifteen minutes.

  3. Tie up the jar and store in a cool place.

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. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the body of the pickle and soften as they cook in the syrup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the pickle.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickle.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for three days. The tomatoes need time in the sweet vinegar syrup so the sugar and acid can penetrate and flavor the fruit. Standing too short a time leaves the pickle under-flavored.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, clove. 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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