Skip to main content
Main

Spiced Tomatoes

A pickled tomato mixture flavored with vinegar, salt, horseradish, mustard, pepper, spices, sugar, and peppers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spiced Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickle

  1. In a bowl, combine cider vinegar, coarse sea salt, horseradish, mustard seed, black pepper, red peppers, green peppers, celery seed, onion, ground cloves, ground mace, ground cinnamon, and sugar.

  2. Add the peeled and chopped tomatoes to the mixture and stir until well combined.

  3. Do not heat the vinegar.

Rest

  1. Let the mixture sit until ready to use.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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 mingles with the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves and flavours the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour and a bit of texture to the pickle.
Horseradish
Adds a hot, pungent bite that fades as the pickle rests.

The step that matters

Do not heat the vinegar. This is a raw, unheated pickle. Heating the vinegar would change the sharp flavour and soften the fresh texture of the vegetables, so keep it cold and let the flavours develop by resting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, horseradish, mustard, pepper, celery, clove):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, horseradish, mustard, pepper, celery, clove. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes