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Dessert

Sue's Sweet Tomato Pickle

A sweet pickle made from green tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, spices, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Sue's Sweet Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and layer them in a bowl, sprinkling each layer with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let the tomatoes stand overnight, then rinse them in the morning to remove the salt.

Cook and store

  1. In a pot, combine the cider vinegar, white ginger, cinnamon sticks, celery seed, sugar, cloves, and sliced onion.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the tomatoes and boil until the mixture is clear.

  3. Transfer the pickle into small jars for storage.

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. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the main body of the pickle, softened and absorbing the sweet-sour syrup during boiling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the sliced tomatoes, firming them and reducing excess moisture before cooking.
Cider vinegar
Supplies the acidity that gives the pickle its sharp, preserving tang.
Sugar
Balances the vinegar with sweetness and helps form the thick, syrupy liquid.

The step that matters

Boiling until the mixture is clear. Boiling must be continued until the syrup and tomatoes have cooked through and the liquid turns clear; stopping early leaves the pickle underdone and cloudier. Overcooking can make the tomatoes mushy.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, ginger, cinnamon, celery, sugar, 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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