Skip to main content
Side

Tomato Pickle

A pickled tomato and onion relish seasoned with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle sliced tomatoes and onions with coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

  2. Drain the vegetables.

Make the pickles

  1. In a kettle, layer spices and the drained tomatoes and onions alternately.

  2. Wet the mustard before adding it to the kettle.

  3. Cover the mixture with vinegar.

  4. Boil for 10 to 15 minutes.

  5. If the pickles taste too sharp, add sugar to balance the flavor.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomato
Provides the bulk of the pickle and its tart, firm texture once salted and cooked.
Onions
Add sweetness and body that softens during the long cooking.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the mixture and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp heat that blooms in the hot vinegar.

The step that matters

Drain the vegetables after salting. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions overnight. Draining removes that liquid so the pickle stays firm and the vinegar is not diluted.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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

More tomato pickles recipes

Green 141Sweet 31Sweet Green 20 See all 49 →

You might also like

Onion PuddingOnion Pudding9 recipesEggplant CakesEggplant Cakes34 recipesEscalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)Escalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)25 recipesParsnip CroquettesParsnip Croquettes12 recipes