Skip to main content
Main

Sweet Tomato Pickle

A pickled tomato dish preserved in a sweet vinegar and spice syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Sweet Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the tomatoes and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let the tomatoes stand overnight.

  3. Squeeze out the brine and soak the tomatoes in fresh water for several hours.

  4. Boil the tomatoes in strong ginger tea for 30 minutes.

  5. Drain the tomatoes from the tea.

Make the syrup

  1. In a large pot, combine vinegar, sugar, cinnamon sticks, cloves, mace, raisins, and citron.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

  3. Boil the syrup until thick.

Pack and seal

  1. Put the pickles in quart jars.

  2. Pour the thick syrup over the pickles.

  3. Seal the jars tightly.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Ginger + teatop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together216 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the main body of the pickle, softening as they are salted and boiled.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out brine and moisture from the sliced tomatoes, firming them before soaking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it a sharp, tangy balance.
White sugar
Provides sweetness and, when boiled down, a thick syrup that coats the pickles.
Seeded raisins
Add sweetness, chewiness and concentrated fruit flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Boiling off water concentrates the sugar and vinegar so the syrup thickens and preserves the tomatoes. Stopping early leaves a thin liquid that spoils more easily.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, ginger, tea, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes