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Chopped Tomatoes

A pickled tomato relish with spices, cabbage, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Chopped Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine chopped tomatoes and salt in a bowl.

  2. Let stand overnight.

  3. Drain the mixture through a colander.

Pickle

  1. Add ground cloves, allspice, cinnamon, ground mustard, black pepper, green pepper, and chopped cabbage.

  2. Cover the mixture with cold vinegar.

  3. Add onions if 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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 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

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and release juice that the salt draws out.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes and helps preserve the mixture.
Cold vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it a sharp, tangy flavor.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and bulk that holds up well in the brine.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that balances the sweetness of the spices.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salting. Salt pulls a large amount of liquid from the chopped tomatoes overnight. Draining it off before adding the spices and vinegar keeps the pickle firm and stops it from becoming watery and diluted.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, cinnamon, mustard, pepper, cabbage, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, cinnamon, mustard, pepper, cabbage, 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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