Name: Spiced Tomatoes
Ingredients: 7 pounds tomatoes; 1 quart vinegar; 3 pounds brown sugar; ½ ounce cloves; ½ ounce allspice; ½ ounce cinnamon

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Spiced Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Peel the tomatoes.
Combine the peeled tomatoes, vinegar, and brown sugar in a large pot.

Cook

Boil for 2.5 hours.
Add cloves, allspice, and cinnamon.
Boil for an additional 30 minutes.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,348 recipes

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

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

Tomatoes: Provide the bulk and moisture that cook down into the body of the preserve.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that gives a sharp tang and helps preserve the mixture.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and helps balance the vinegar's sharpness.
Cloves: Contribute a warm, strong aroma to the finished dish.
Allspice: Contributes a warm, mixed-spice aroma and flavour.
Cinnamon: Adds a sweet, warm aroma that rounds out the spiced flavour.

Swap the tomato

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

Mustardfits better
Horseradishfits better
Capsicumfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, cinnamon. 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.