Name: Pickled Tomatoes
Ingredients: pear-shaped tomatoes (yellow and red mixed); 1 teaspoon salt; ginger root; cinnamon; mace; small red peppers; vinegar

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash the tomatoes and place them in narrow-mouthed jars that can be sealed airtight.

Pickle

For each quart of tomatoes, add 1 teaspoon of salt and mix in ginger root, cinnamon, mace, and small red peppers.
Fill the jars with the tomatoes and pour vinegar over them until full.
Seal the jars and store them in a cool, dark place.
They will be ready to use in three to four weeks.

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.

Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pear + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together600 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Pear + gingertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together452 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pear-shaped tomatoes: Provide the main body of the pickle, softening slightly as they cure in the vinegar.
Vinegar: Acidity that preserves the tomatoes and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Salt: Draws out moisture and seasons the tomatoes before they take on the vinegar.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, tomato, ginger, cinnamon, pepper, vinegar):

Clovefits better
Allspicefits better
Cardamomfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, tomato, ginger, cinnamon, pepper, vinegar. 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.