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Pickled Tomatoes

Pickled tomatoes preserved in a vinegar and sugar brine with cloves and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,245 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the tomatoes about ¼ inch thick and let them stand in salt water overnight. Drain the tomatoes.

Pickle

  1. In a pot, heat the vinegar, sugar, and spices.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the drained tomatoes.

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 + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + horseradishtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together415 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and soak up the salt and vinegar flavour.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the tomatoes.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes during the overnight soak, firming their texture.
Cloves
Adds warm, spiced aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Draining the tomatoes after the salt soak. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes by osmosis. Draining removes that liquid so the hot vinegar mixture is not diluted, and the tomatoes keep a firmer texture and absorb the pickling liquid more evenly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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