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Tomato Sweet Pickle

A pickled green tomato and onion mixture sweetened with sugar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Tomato Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and onions, then sprinkle with salt and let stand overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the mixture, add water and vinegar, and boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain again and discard the vinegar and water.

Make the pickle

  1. Add sugar, ginger, vinegar, mustard, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and cayenne to the tomatoes and onions.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes, stirring often.

  3. Tie the allspice and cloves in a piece of thin cloth and remove after cooking.

Jar

  1. Transfer the pickles to jars and seal while hot.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + cinnamontop 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
Provide the bulk of the pickle and firm texture once salted and cooked.
Onions
Add savory flavour and body to the pickle as they soften during cooking.
Salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes and onions, firming them before cooking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Drain again after the first boil. Discarding the vinegar and water removes excess salt and liquid, so the final pickle is not overly salty or watery and the vegetables keep a firmer texture.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, sugar, ginger, mustard, 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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