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Canned Tomato Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made from canned tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, spices, and cayenne pepper.

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 ↓

Canned Tomato Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a preserving kettle, combine tomatoes, brown sugar, vinegar, mace, cinnamon, cloves, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Boil the mixture, stirring occasionally, until it thickens to a catsup-like consistency.

  3. Once cool, store the mixture like other pickles.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk and main body of the pickle.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the mixture as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Boil until it thickens. The mixture must cook long enough for moisture to evaporate and the sugar and tomato to concentrate into a catsup-like texture. Stirring occasionally keeps the sugar from scorching on the bottom of the kettle.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, pepper. 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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