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Spiced Tomatoes

A pickled tomato preparation with vinegar, sugar, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Spiced Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel the tomatoes and cut them in half to remove the seeds.

  2. Place the tomato halves in a colander, cut side down, to drain.

Make the syrup

  1. In a porcelain kettle, combine the vinegar, brown sugar, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon.

  2. Add the juice from the tomatoes and as much pulp as possible from the seeds through a fine sieve.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the tomatoes in batches based on kettle size.

  4. Boil for 5 minutes, then transfer the tomatoes to a stone crock.

  5. Boil the syrup until thick, then pour it over the tomatoes in the crock.

Store

  1. Let it cool and store for later use.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Sound, ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body of the dish, softening as they simmer in the spiced syrup.
Best cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the tomatoes.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the syrup and thickens it as it boils down.
Whole cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup until thick. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugar and vinegar, so the syrup thickens and keeps the tomatoes stable. Stopping too early leaves a thin syrup that spoils more easily.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, cinnamon. 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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