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Pickled Tomatoes

Pickled tomatoes preserved with salt, spices, vinegar, and water.

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

Pickled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and rinse

  1. Wash the tomatoes and pierce each one with a fork.

  2. Layer the tomatoes in a deep pan, sprinkling salt between each layer.

  3. Let them stand for two days, then rinse in clear water.

Pickle

  1. Put the tomatoes in stone jars and cover with equal parts vinegar and water.

  2. Let them sit until the next day.

  3. Separate the garlic, remove the skins, and set aside.

  4. Remove the tomatoes from the vinegar and water, empty the jars, and layer the tomatoes with the spices until the jars are three-quarters full.

  5. Cover with cold vinegar and seal the jars.

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. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 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

What each ingredient does

Small tomatoes
Form the main body of the pickle and soften as they absorb the brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes, firming the flesh before pickling.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the tomatoes.
Whole allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling liquid.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows during the long pickling period.

The step that matters

Salting and standing for two days. Salt drawn out by the layers firms the tomatoes and removes excess water. Rinsing afterward removes surface salt so the pickle is not overly salty and the tomatoes keep their texture.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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