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Frosted Tomato Pickle

A pickled tomato dish with onions, garlic, green pepper, spices, vinegar, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Frosted Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash and slice the tomatoes.

  2. Chop the onions, garlic seed, and green pepper.

  3. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let sit overnight.

  4. In the morning, drain the mixture.

Make the pickle

  1. Add allspice, ground ginger, mace, turmeric (in a bag), and white mustard.

  2. Combine vinegar and brown sugar in a kettle.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Pour the boiling mixture over the vegetables.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and release juice that mingles with the spiced vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavour.
Brown sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness with sweetness and adds depth to the syrup.
Onions
Add savoury bulk and a sharp aromatic flavour that softens during cooking.
White mustard
Contributes pungent, sharp flavour that carries through the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Drain before adding the spices and vinegar. Salting draws water out of the vegetables. Draining well removes that liquid so the vinegar and sugar mixture is not diluted and the pickle keeps its firm texture and proper balance.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, garlic, pepper, allspice, ginger, turmeric):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, garlic, pepper, allspice, ginger, turmeric. 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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