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Spiced Tomato Pickles

Pickled tomatoes and green peppers seasoned with mace, horseradish, cloves, onions, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Spiced Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the tomatoes and green peppers finely and mix them together.

  2. Place the mixture in a stone jar and sprinkle with salt; let it stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the mixture through a colander.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Scald the vinegar in a pot and add the spices and onions.

  2. Once it comes to a boil, pour the hot mixture over the pickles.

Jar

  1. Pack the pickles in jars while hot and cover closely.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and release moisture that the salt draws out.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and sharpens its flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and concentrating their flavour.
Onions
Add pungent sweetness and savoury depth to the pickling liquid.
Green peppers
Add crisp texture and a fresh, grassy bitterness to the mix.

The step that matters

Draining after the salt rest. Salting for 24 hours pulls a large amount of liquid from the vegetables. Draining thoroughly removes that water so the pickle stays firm and the hot vinegar is not diluted.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, horseradish, clove, tomato, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, horseradish, clove, tomato, pepper, vinegar. 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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