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Pickled Tomatoes

Pickled tomatoes preserved with vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Pickled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald the tomatoes until the skin slips off easily and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let them stand for 24 hours, then drain off the juice.

Pickle

  1. Pour a boiling hot pickle made of 1 pound sugar, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, and 2 teaspoons cloves into the tomatoes for every quart of vinegar.

  2. Drain the liquid and scald it.

  3. Pour it over the tomatoes again every other day for a week.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Small, smooth tomatoes
Form the main body of the pickle, softening slightly as they are scalded and steeped.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness and helps build the syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice to the pickling liquid.
Cloves
Adds pungent, aromatic spice to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling pickle over the tomatoes. The liquid must be fully boiling so it penetrates the tomatoes and begins preserving them. Repeating the scalding and pouring every other day over a week keeps the flavor building and the liquid hot enough to work.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

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