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Sweet-pickle Tomato

A pickled tomato preserved with salt, vinegar, brown sugar, ginger, mustard seed, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet-pickle Tomato

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the tomatoes and sprinkle lightly with salt.

  2. Let them stand for 24 hours in an earthen or stone vessel.

  3. Drain off all the water.

Pickle and cook

  1. Put the tomatoes in a kettle and cover with vinegar.

  2. Add the brown sugar, ginger, mustard seed, and ground mace. Mix and cook steadily but slowly for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ginger + mustardtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,456 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,887 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 recipes

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

  5. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Smooth green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle; salting and draining pulls out water so they stay firm.
Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the syrup and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the tomatoes and gives the pickle its tang.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during the long simmer.
Ginger
Contributes warm, spicy aroma and a slight heat to the sweet-sour syrup.

The step that matters

Drain off all the water after salting. Salting draws water out of the tomatoes over 24 hours. Pouring off that liquid before adding vinegar and sugar keeps the pickle thick and concentrated rather than watery, and helps the tomatoes stay firm during cooking.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, vinegar, sugar, ginger, mustard):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, ginger, mustard. 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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