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Frosted Tomato Pickle

A pickled tomato dish with onions, green pepper, spices, brown sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Frosted Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash and slice the tomatoes.

  2. Chop the onions and green pepper.

  3. Sprinkle the tomatoes, onions, and green pepper with coarse sea salt and let sit overnight.

  4. In the morning, drain the mixture.

Spice and cook

  1. Add allspice, race ginger, mace, and turmeric (in a bag) to the drained mixture.

  2. In a separate pot, combine vinegar and brown sugar, then bring to a boil.

  3. Add the spiced tomato mixture to the boiling vinegar and sugar.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, 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 of the pickle and release moisture that the salt draws out overnight.
Vinegar
Supplies the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Onions
Add savory body and flavor to the pickle base.
Garlic seed
Adds pungent aroma and savory depth to the pickle.

The step that matters

Drain the salted mixture in the morning. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions overnight. Draining removes that liquid so the pickle does not become watery and diluted once it is simmered in the vinegar and sugar.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, garlic, pepper, allspice, ginger, turmeric):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, garlic, pepper, allspice, ginger, turmeric. 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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