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Sweet Tomato Pickle

A pickled mixture of tomatoes, onions, cabbage, peppers, and spices in a sweet and sour brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sweet Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and drain

  1. Sprinkle sliced tomatoes and onions with salt. Let stand overnight.

  2. Drain the mixture. Add sliced cabbage.

Boil and discard

  1. Add water and vinegar. Boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Discard the vinegar and water.

Make the pickle

  1. Add sugar, vinegar, ground cloves, allspice, ginger, mustard seed, whole cloves, cinnamon, cayenne, and sliced peppers.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes or until the pickle looks clear.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and release moisture when salted and drained.
Onions
Add savory flavor and body to the pickle mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickle its sharp, tangy character.
Red and green peppers
Add sweetness, color, and a crisp texture to the pickle.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 minutes or until the pickle looks clear. Boiling in the sugar and vinegar mixture lets the flavors blend and the sugar dissolve and concentrate. Stopping too early can leave the pickle cloudy and underdeveloped, while overcooking can soften the vegetables too much.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, cabbage, vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, ginger):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cabbage, vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, ginger. 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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