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Sweet Tomato Pickle

A pickled tomato dish made with sliced green tomatoes, salt, brown sugar, cider vinegar, cloves, and cinnamon.

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 salt over sliced tomatoes and let them stand overnight.

  2. Drain the tomatoes.

Make the syrup

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

  2. Boil the mixture for 15 to 20 minutes.

  3. Skim off any foam and 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. Sugar + cinnamontop 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).

Sugar and cinnamon 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 they soak.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it cooks into the syrup, body and thickness.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickles.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes so they stay firmer in the syrup.

The step that matters

Skim off any foam and boil the syrup longer if a thicker consistency is desired.. Foam left on the surface can spoil the appearance and flavor of the syrup. Longer boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugar, so the syrup thickens as it cools.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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