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Spiced Tomatoes

A pickled tomato dish flavored with cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Spiced Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced syrup

  1. Tie the spices in a coarse muslin bag and place it in the vinegar.

  2. Add the sugar to the vinegar and bring to a boil, skimming as necessary.

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Let the mixture cool, then add the tomatoes.

  2. Boil slowly until the tomatoes are tender.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Small yellow tomatoes
Form the body of the preserve and soften into tender pieces as they simmer.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens the syrup as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the fruit.
Stick cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that infuses into the vinegar syrup.
Whole cloves
Adds a pungent, aromatic flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until the tomatoes are tender. A slow simmer softens the tomatoes gradually so their skins stay intact and the sugar-vinegar syrup does not scorch or reduce too quickly on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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