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Spiced Tomatoes

A pickled green tomato recipe using cider vinegar, brown sugar, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Spiced Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spices

  1. Tie the cloves and cinnamon in small bags.

Cook the tomatoes

  1. In a pot, boil the cider vinegar, brown sugar, and spice bags until clear.

  2. Add the peeled green tomatoes and boil for two hours.

Can

  1. Transfer the tomatoes into cans, placing a spice bag in each can.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + tomatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk and firm, tart flesh that soaks up the spiced syrup.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the pickling liquid and adds a deep, caramel-like flavour.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the syrup and helps preserve the tomatoes.
Cloves
Add a warm, pungent aroma to the pickling liquid.
Cinnamon
Adds a sweet, woody aroma that rounds out the spiced syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the tomatoes for two hours. Long boiling softens the tomatoes' cell walls and pectin, so they can turn mushy and collapse. Watch the texture and keep the heat controlled so the tomatoes stay in pieces while absorbing the syrup.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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