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Chopped Tomato Pickle

A pickled tomato dish made by brining chopped tomatoes with salt, vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, cloves, cinnamon, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Mix chopped tomatoes with salt. Let stand overnight.

  2. Drain well.

Cook and jar

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, cloves, cinnamon, and allspice.

  2. Boil the mixture with the chopped tomatoes for 30 minutes.

  3. Put the pickle in jars.

  4. Keep cool.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, softening as they cook and absorbing the spiced syrup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes so they drain and firm up before cooking.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the acidity and adds sweetness to the pickle.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that carries through the cooked pickle.

The step that matters

Drain the salted tomatoes well. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes overnight. If they are not drained thoroughly, the excess liquid dilutes the vinegar and sugar syrup, weakening the acidity and making the pickle watery.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, mustard, clove, cinnamon, allspice. 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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