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Tomato Pickle

A pickled tomato mixture with onions, cucumbers, peppers, spices, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and prepare the green tomatoes and small white onions.

Combine and pickle

  1. Combine the tomatoes, onions, celery seed, cucumbers, red peppers, mustard seed, cloves, allspice, and brown sugar in a large bowl.

  2. Cover the mixture with cold vinegar and let it sit.

  3. Store in a jar or container until ready to use.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and soak up the vinegar and spices as they sit.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar.
Cold vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, giving the pickle its sour flavor and preserving character.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, slightly bitter flavor that deepens as the pickle sits.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, celery, cucumber, pepper, mustard, clove, allspice):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, celery, cucumber, pepper, mustard, 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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