Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Plum-tomatoes

Pickled plum tomatoes are preserved in vinegar with cloves, peppercorns, allspice, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Plum-tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fill a glass fruit jar with the tomatoes.

  2. Add the whole cloves, peppercorns, allspice, and stick cinnamon.

  3. Fill the jar with boiling hot vinegar and seal it.

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. Plum + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Plum + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Plum tomatoes
Provide the main body and fruit flavor that the pickling liquid soaks into.
Boiling hot vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps it keep.
Whole cloves
Contributes a strong, warm aroma that flavors the pickling liquid.
Peppercorns
Adds a sharp, pungent spiciness to the pickling liquid.
Allspice
Adds a warm, aromatic flavor that blends clove and cinnamon notes.
Stick cinnamon
Adds sweet, woody aroma that rounds out the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Fill the jar with boiling hot vinegar and seal it.. The vinegar must be hot and fill the jar fully so that air is driven out before sealing. Vinegar's acidity slows the growth of spoilage microbes, so a well-filled, sealed jar helps the pickle keep.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, clove, allspice, cinnamon, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes