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Pickled Tomatoes

Pickled tomatoes preserved with salt, sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Pickled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald the tomatoes until the skin slips off easily.

  2. Sprinkle salt over the tomatoes and let them stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain off the juice.

Pickle

  1. Pour a boiling hot pickle made of sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and vinegar over the tomatoes.

  2. Drain the liquid, scald it, and pour it over the tomatoes again every other day for a week.

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. 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 + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Small, smooth tomatoes
Form the main body of the pickle and absorb the spiced syrup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out juice from the tomatoes, firming them and concentrating the flavour before pickling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the tomatoes and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Draining the juice after salting. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes by osmosis. If the juice is not fully drained, the tomatoes stay watery and the hot pickle is diluted, weakening both texture and flavour.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, clove, 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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