Name: Sweet Piccalilli
Ingredients: Tomatoes (just turning); Coarse sea salt; Vinegar; Sugar; Cinnamon; Mace; Cloves

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 Piccalilli

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the tomatoes and slice them thick without peeling.
Layer the tomatoes in a crock, sprinkling salt between each layer, and let them sit overnight.
In the morning, drain the tomatoes.
Make a syrup with vinegar, sugar, and spices (cinnamon, mace, and cloves).
Add a few tomatoes to the syrup and simmer slowly.
Remove the tomatoes before they are fully cooked and place them in a crock on the back of the stove.
Repeat with the remaining tomatoes, making fresh syrup if it gets too thin.
Pour the syrup over the tomatoes and cover 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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,348 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the tomato

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

Capsicumfits better
Mustardfits better
Horseradishfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, mace, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.