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Tomato Pickle

A pickled tomato dish preserved with vinegar, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Slice the onions and add them to the tomatoes.

Cook

  1. Boil the mixture in vinegar for 2 hours with the spices.

  2. Add mustard seed, ground mustard, turmeric, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, salt, and brown 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Turmeric + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 absorb the salt and vinegar flavors.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes and onions, firming them before cooking.
Onions
Add sharpness and sweetness that mellow during the long simmer.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and sharpens its flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavor that deepens during cooking.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture in vinegar for 2 hours with the spices. The long simmer must fully soften the tomatoes and blend the spices into the vinegar. Too short a boil leaves the pickle raw-tasting and under-flavored, while overcooking can turn the vegetables mushy.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, mustard, turmeric, clove, allspice, 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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