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Sweet Tomato Pickles

Pickled tomatoes sweetened with vinegar, brown sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Sweet Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Boil the sliced tomatoes in water and vinegar with a little salt until easily pierced with a fork.

  2. Drain the tomatoes through a sieve.

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. Scald together the vinegar, brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice in a pot.

  2. Put the spices into a bag and boil in the vinegar mixture.

Pack and cover

  1. In a jar, layer the sliced tomatoes and thinly sliced onions alternately until all are placed.

  2. Pour the boiling spiced vinegar over the layers and add the whole mustard seed.

  3. Cover lightly.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Forms the body of the pickle and softens as it cooks in the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and keeps the pickle tangy.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses depth that rounds out the acid.
Ground cinnamon
Adds a warm, sweet aroma to the spiced vinegar.
Whole mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent note that stands out against the sweet spices.

The step that matters

Boil the tomatoes until just pierced. Heat softens the tomato's cell walls and pectin, so the slices become tender. Boiling too long turns them to mush, while stopping too early leaves them firm and raw-tasting.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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