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Tomato Pickle

A pickled tomato preserve made with vinegar, sugar, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and mace.

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

Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the tomatoes, cut them finely, and drain.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine the tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon.

  2. Cook the mixture until it thickens.

  3. Finally, stir in the ground mace.

Seal

  1. Seal the mixture in jars.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and its fresh, tangy body once cooked down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves and cooks, helps thicken the mixture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sharp flavour and helps preserve it.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickle.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickle.
Cinnamon
Contributes sweet, warm aromatic flavour to the pickle.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until it thickens. Cooking drives off excess water from the tomatoes and lets the sugar and vinegar concentrate. Undercooked mixtures stay runny and may spoil sooner in jars.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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