Name: Ripe Tomato Pickles III
Ingredients: ½ peck small tomatoes; 6 good sized onions, sliced; 3 ounces mustard seed (black and yellow mixed); 5 cents worth horseradish (cut in chips); 1 ounce whole cloves; 1 ounce allspice; several small red peppers (cut up); 1 gallon vinegar; 1 cup coarse sea salt

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ripe Tomato Pickles III

Ingredients

Directions

Layer the tomatoes, onions, mustard seed, horseradish, cloves, allspice, and red peppers in fruit jars.
Boil the vinegar with the salt until dissolved. Let the vinegar cool before pouring it over the layered ingredients in the jars.
Ensure the vinegar is not too strong.

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.

Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,928 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together654 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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 the brine over time.
Vinegar: Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Mustard seed: Adds pungent, sharp flavour that deepens as the pickle matures.
Onions: Contribute sweetness and savoury depth to the pickled mixture.

The step that matters

Let the vinegar cool before pouring. Pouring boiling vinegar over the layered vegetables can soften them too much and cook them unevenly, leaving a limp texture. Cooling it first keeps the pieces firmer while still letting the brine penetrate.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, mustard, horseradish, clove, allspice, pepper, vinegar):

Shallotfits better
Radishfits better
Broccolifits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, mustard, horseradish, clove, allspice, 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.

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Ripe Tomato Pickles III