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Tomato Pickle

A pickled tomato preserve made with vinegar, coffee sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pare and weigh ripe tomatoes.

  2. Place tomatoes in jars and cover with vinegar.

  3. Let stand for three days.

Sweeten and spice

  1. Pour off the vinegar.

  2. Add 5 pounds of coffee sugar for every 7 pounds of fruit.

  3. Add spices to taste.

  4. Pour over the tomatoes.

Cook

  1. Cook slowly all day on the back of the stove.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Coffee + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together895 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the fruit that forms the body and flavor of the pickle.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps keep the pickle stable.
Coffee sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the syrup as it cooks down.
Spices
Add warm aroma, such as cinnamon, mace and cloves, to the sweet-sour fruit.

The step that matters

Cook slowly all day on the back of the stove.. Gentle, prolonged heat lets the sugar dissolve fully and the liquid reduce and thicken gradually. Higher heat would risk scorching the sugar on the bottom of the pan before the fruit is cooked through.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, coffee, 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.

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