Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Pickle

Pickled tomatoes with allspice, cloves, mustard, celery seed, turmeric, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop all vegetables finely.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and let stand overnight.

  3. Drain the vegetables and place them in a kettle.

Cook

  1. Add spices and seasoning.

  2. Pour vinegar over the mixture and boil for 1 hour or more.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk and moisture that become the pickle's body.
Onions
Add savory pungency that mellows during the long simmer.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and body that holds up through long cooking.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavor.

The step that matters

Salting overnight. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables by osmosis. Draining well removes that liquid, so the pickle stays thick rather than watery once the vinegar is added and boiled.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, onion, clove, cabbage, mustard, pepper, celery. 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.

More tomato pickle recipes

Green 105Sweet 26French 6Frosted 4 See all 48 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipes