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Amber Pickles

Pickled tomatoes preserved in a sweet vinegar syrup with spices.

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

Amber Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Prick each tomato three times with a needle to prevent bursting.

  2. Soak tomatoes in salted water for 30 minutes.

  3. Place tomatoes in jars.

Make the syrup

  1. In a porcelain kettle, boil vinegar, sugar, and a pinch of salt.

  2. Tie spices in a cheesecloth bag and boil in syrup for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove spice bag and heat tomatoes in the syrup (do not boil).

  4. Use a skimmer to take out tomatoes and place them in jars.

  5. Boil syrup for 20 more minutes and pour hot over tomatoes.

Rest and seal

  1. The next day, pour off syrup, reheat, and pour over tomatoes again, then seal jars.

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 + cinnamontop 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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pear + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Small yellow pear tomatoes
Provide the main body of the pickle, softening slightly while absorbing the spiced syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the tomatoes and gives the pickle its tang.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Keep the tomatoes from bursting. Pricking the skins lets the syrup penetrate and stops pressure building inside the fruit. Heating the tomatoes without boiling them keeps their skins and shapes intact.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, tomato, 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.

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