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To Pickle Tomatoes

A method for pickling tomatoes with salt, vinegar, mustard seed, cloves, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Pickle Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the tomatoes

  1. Prick each tomato with a fork to allow juice to exude.

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

  3. Cover and let sit for three days.

Pickle

  1. Wash off the salt and cover the tomatoes with cold vinegar.

  2. Add the juice from the tomatoes, a large handful of mustard seed, and 1 ounce each of cloves and white pepper.

  3. Let the pickles sit for about two weeks before using.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Tomato + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 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 round tomatoes
Provide the flesh that softens and absorbs the brine and spices as it pickles.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes, concentrating flavor and firming the flesh before pickling.
Cold vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the tomatoes and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, slightly bitter aroma that flavors the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Washing off the salt before adding vinegar. Salt drawn into the tomatoes is what concentrates their flavor and firms them. Rinsing it off too thoroughly can leave the pickle bland, while leaving too much makes it overly salty and harder to balance with the vinegar.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, mustard, 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.

More pickled tomatoes recipes

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