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Ripe Tomato Sour Pickles

Pickled ripe tomatoes flavored with brown sugar, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Ripe Tomato Sour Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and layer

  1. Scald and peel the tomatoes, leaving them whole.

  2. Layer the tomatoes in a jar, sprinkling each layer with brown sugar.

  3. Add whole cloves and cinnamon to the layers.

Store and ferment

  1. Cover the jar lightly and store it in a cool place.

  2. Allow the tomatoes to ferment and create their own vinegar.

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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body and the natural acids that ferment into vinegar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and food for the fermenting microbes that sour the tomatoes.
Whole cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavor to the tomatoes.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma that pairs with the brown sugar.

The step that matters

Covering and storing the jar. The tomatoes must ferment rather than spoil. A light cover keeps dust and air-borne contaminants out while letting gas escape, and a cool place slows unwanted spoilage so the sugar-fed fermentation can produce its acids.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, 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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