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Kipe Tomato Pickle

A pickled tomato preserve made with vinegar, coffee sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Kipe Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and weigh the ripe tomatoes.

  2. Place the tomatoes in jars and cover them with vinegar.

  3. Let them stand for three days.

Make the pickle

  1. Pour off the vinegar and add 5 pounds of coffee sugar for every 7 pounds of tomatoes.

  2. Add spices to taste.

  3. Pour the mixture over the tomatoes.

  4. Cook slowly all day on the back of the stove.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Coffee + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together895 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and carry most of its flavor and texture.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and softens the tomatoes.
Coffee sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the syrup as it cooks down.
Spices
Add warm aroma, with cinnamon, mace and cloves giving the pickle its character.

The step that matters

Cook slowly all day on the back of the stove. Long, gentle heat lets the sugar dissolve and the syrup thicken while the tomatoes soften without breaking down completely. Cooking too fiercely can scorch the sugar on the base of the pan and make the pickle taste bitter.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, coffee, 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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