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Yellow Tomato Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made from yellow tomatoes, sugar, lemon, ginger, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Yellow Tomato Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the yellow tomatoes in the morning.

  2. Peel the yellow tomatoes.

  3. Cover the tomatoes with 1 quart water and 1 pint vinegar.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon salt.

  5. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  6. Drain the tomatoes.

Make the pickle

  1. Use ¾ pound sugar for each pound of tomatoes.

  2. Pack the tomatoes in layers.

  3. Let stand until the next morning.

  4. Pour off the juice.

  5. Add small thin slices of lemon, ginger root, oil of cinnamon, and oil of cloves.

  6. Boil until thick.

  7. Add the tomatoes.

  8. Cook until transparent.

Jar and serve

  1. Pack into jars.

  2. Serve with chicken or meats.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow tomatoes
Form the body of the pickle, becoming tender and translucent as they cook in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, once boiled down, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps keep the pickle stable in jars.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Boil until thick. Boiling concentrates the sugar and liquid into a syrup that firms the tomatoes and helps preserve them. Stopping too early leaves a thin, watery pickle that may spoil sooner.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, lemon, ginger, 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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