Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Fickle

A preserved tomato pickle made with tomatoes, onions, green peppers, vinegar, sugar, salt, spices, and celery salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Fickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onions, and green peppers.

  2. In a large pot, combine all ingredients.

Cook

  1. Bring to a boil and cook for 2 hours.

  2. Add a little vinegar during the last hour of cooking.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Make up the bulk of the pickle and release juice that cooks down into the sauce.
Onions
Add savory depth, and their sharpness mellows during long cooking.
Green peppers
Contribute a fresh, vegetal bite and some texture to the pickle.
Vinegar
Adds sourness and acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar during the last hour. Vinegar added at the start would be boiled for hours, which drives off some of its volatile acetic acid and dulls its sharp, bright flavor. Adding it late keeps the acidity fresher and more noticeable in the finished pickle.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, celery):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, celery. 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.

More tomato pickle recipes

Green 105Sweet 26French 6Frosted 4 See all 48 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes