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Sweet Tomato Pickle

A pickled tomato recipe with sweet and spicy flavors.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Sweet Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the tomatoes and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let the tomatoes stand overnight.

  3. Squeeze out the brine and soak the tomatoes in fresh water for several hours.

  4. Boil the tomatoes in strong ginger tea for 30 minutes.

  5. Drain the tomatoes and combine them with vinegar, sugar, cinnamon sticks, cloves, mace, raisins, and citron in a pot.

  6. Boil the mixture together for 30 minutes.

Jar and seal

  1. Put the mixture into quart jars.

  2. Boil the syrup until thick.

  3. Pour the syrup over the pickles.

  4. Seal tightly.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Ginger + teatop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together216 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and soften as they cook in the syrup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes, firming them and removing excess brine.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and, once boiled down, thickens the syrup that coats the pickles.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickles.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness as they plump in the syrup.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the brine and soaking in fresh water. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes; if they are not rinsed and soaked well, the pickle stays overly salty and the flesh stays limp rather than firm.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, ginger, tea, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, 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.

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