Name: Tomato Pickles
Ingredients: 1 peck yellow tomatoes or small round red tomatoes; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); 12 large white onions, sliced; 2 ounces ground cloves; 2 ounces ground allspice; 1 ounce black pepper; 1 bottle good mustard; vinegar

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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prick each tomato with a fork and layer them in a jar with salt between each layer.
Let the tomatoes sit for 8 days.
Drain off the liquid.
Add sliced onions, ground cloves, ground allspice, and black pepper, layering them with the tomatoes.
Scald the vinegar and pour it over the tomatoes and onions while cold.
The pickles will be ready to use in 10 days.

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.

Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,928 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
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

Swap the tomato

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

Horseradishfits better
Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, allspice, pepper, mustard, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.