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Sweet Pickled Tomatoes

A pickled tomato preserve made with sugar, cider vinegar, and whole spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Sweet Pickled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the yellow tomatoes or scald and peel the red tomatoes.

  2. Tie the spices in a bag and combine with sugar and vinegar in a porcelain-lined kettle.

Cook and pack

  1. Add the tomatoes and cook gently for 10 minutes.

  2. Skim the tomatoes from the syrup and pack them into stone jars.

  3. Boil the syrup for 5 minutes and pour it over the tomatoes.

  4. Let the jars sit overnight, then strain the syrup and boil it for 5 minutes.

  5. Pour the hot syrup over the tomatoes again.

  6. Repeat this process for three mornings, keeping the spice bag in the syrup.

  7. Pack the tomatoes in jars and seal tightly.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + cassiatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  5. Cassia + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Small red or yellow tomatoes
Provide the fruit that softens and absorbs the spiced syrup as it is repeatedly heated.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the syrup and helps preserve the tomatoes.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sweet syrup and helps preserve the tomatoes.
Mixed whole spices
Infuse the syrup with aroma and warm flavour over repeated boiling.

The step that matters

Repeated syrup boiling over several mornings. Reheating the syrup and pouring it over the tomatoes again draws the sugar and spice into the fruit gradually. Skipping or rushing the repeats leaves the tomatoes less sweet and spiced, and less well preserved, because the syrup concentrates and penetrates only with repeated heating and resting.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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

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