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Dessert

Sweet Tomato Pickle

A pickled sweet tomato preserve made with tomatoes, salt, cloves, cinnamon, brown sugar, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Sweet Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Sprinkle sliced tomatoes with salt.

  2. Let tomatoes stand overnight.

Make the syrup

  1. In a large pot, combine brown sugar, cider vinegar, cloves, and cinnamon.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes.

  4. Skim off any foam.

  5. Boil the syrup longer if a thicker consistency is desired.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 absorb the sweet syrup as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps build a thick, syrupy preserving liquid.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Whole cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic flavor to the syrup.
Ground cloves
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Skim off any foam. Foam that forms while the syrup boils can carry impurities and cloud the liquid. Removing it keeps the syrup clear and gives a cleaner flavor.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, cinnamon, sugar, cider, 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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