Name: Pickled Tomatoes
Ingredients: small round tomatoes; coarse sea salt; vinegar; mustard; cloves; pepper; mace; onions

Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pickled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prick the small round tomatoes with a fork.
Layer the tomatoes in an earthen vessel, sprinkling plenty of coarse sea salt between layers.
Cover and let them sit in salt for two days.
Prepare a mixture of boiled vinegar, adding mustard, cloves, pepper, mace, and a few slices of onions.
Pour the mixture into a glass jar.
Gradually add the tomatoes to the jar, shaking it to mix the spices.

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.

Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the mace

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

Tarragonfits better
Thymefits better
Garlicfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, mustard, clove, pepper, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.