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Spiced Tomatoes

Preserved tomatoes seasoned with cayenne, black pepper, salt, cloves, mace, and suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Spiced Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes and skin them.

  2. Boil the skinned tomatoes well.

Season

  1. Add cayenne pepper, black pepper, salt, cloves, and mace.

  2. Mix the tomatoes and spices well.

Jar and store

  1. Put the tomatoes in jars and pour a coating of suet over them.

  2. Tie buckskin over the tops of the jars.

  3. Store in a cool place; they will keep for a year.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the preserve, providing moisture and a fresh, acidic base for the spices.
Suet
Forms a fat layer over the jars that seals out air and helps the contents keep.
Cloves
Add a warm, aromatic flavour that deepens the spiced character of the tomatoes.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma that complements the tomatoes and other spices.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that gives the preserved tomatoes a sharp, pungent bite.

The step that matters

Boiling the skinned tomatoes well. Thorough boiling softens the tomatoes and drives off excess water, so the spices distribute evenly and the preserve is less likely to spoil in storage.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Basilfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, 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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