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French Tomato Pickle

A pickled tomato and onion mixture seasoned with vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

French Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Sprinkle the salt over the sliced tomatoes and onions.

  2. Let the tomatoes and onions sit overnight.

  3. Drain the mixture well.

Scald and spice

  1. Scald the mixture in weak vinegar for 10 to 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the mixture again.

  3. Scald the mixture with the strong vinegar.

  4. In a pot, combine the strong vinegar, sugar, curry powder, turmeric, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and mustard.

  5. Simmer the mixture slowly for a few 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.

  1. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Turmeric + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 soften as they cure and simmer in vinegar.
Onions
Add savory bulk and a mild sharpness that mellows during salting and cooking.
Sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes and onions, firming them and concentrating flavour.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness and rounds out the spices.

The step that matters

Drain the mixture well after the overnight salting. Salt draws out water, and leftover moisture dilutes the vinegar in the pot, weakening the acidity and softening the pickle.

Swap the onion

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

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

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