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Pickled Tomatoes

A pickled tomato and pepper relish preserved in brine and vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Pickled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the tomatoes and onions

  1. Prick the tomatoes with a needle and place them in cold brine to cover for a week.

  2. On the fifth day, peel the onions carefully and let them sit in the same brine for two days.

  3. Drain the tomatoes and onions.

  4. Wipe them with a clean cloth.

Pack the jars

  1. Place them in quart jars with the peppers.

  2. Fill one jar with cold vinegar to measure the quantity needed. Use four times that amount.

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. Combine the vinegar, brown sugar, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon in a pot. Heat until scalding hot.

  2. Cool the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into the jars.

  4. Divide the spices among the jars.

  5. Seal the jars.

  6. Store them in a cool, dark place.

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. Allspice + clovetop 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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Small yellow tomatoes
Main vegetable that is preserved; the brine softens and flavors the flesh during the week-long soak.
Button onions
Main vegetable that becomes mildly flavored and tender after soaking in the brine.
Cold vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth, balancing the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Heat the vinegar until scalding hot. Heating the spiced vinegar dissolves the sugar and helps the spices release their aroma into the liquid before it is poured over the vegetables, so the flavor carries through the jar.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, allspice, clove, cinnamon. 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 pickled tomatoes recipes

Sweet 15French 10Spanish 10Spiced 4 See all 75 →

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