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Tomato Pickles

A pickled tomato and onion relish made with vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes and onion very finely.

  2. Sprinkle with ½ cup coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

  3. Squeeze out all the water.

Cook and pickle

  1. Place the tomatoes and onion in a pot with 2 quarts of water.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Pour off the water and rinse with 1 pint of vinegar.

  4. Add the brown sugar, mustard seed, and additional vinegar.

  5. Let boil for a long time.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 carry its texture once cooked.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the chopped tomatoes and onion, firming them and concentrating flavor.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
White mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, savory flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Squeeze out all the water. Salting pulls water from the tomatoes and onion. If that liquid is not fully removed, it dilutes the vinegar and sugar added later, leaving the pickle watery and less tangy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, vinegar, sugar, mustard, clove, allspice):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, sugar, mustard, clove, allspice. 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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