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Sweet Tomato Pickles

Sweet tomato pickles are pickled tomatoes with onions, sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle tomatoes and onions with salt and let stand overnight.

  2. Drain off all liquid the next morning.

Boil and drain

  1. Add water and vinegar to the tomatoes and onions.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain again.

  4. Discard the liquid.

Spice and finish

  1. Add vinegar, sugar, cloves, allspice, ginger, mustard, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper to the pickles.

  2. Boil until tender.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the main body of the pickle and soften as they cook.
Onions
Add savory flavor and sweetness as they soften during cooking.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickle its sharp, preserving tang.

The step that matters

Drain off all liquid after salting. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions by osmosis. Draining that liquid before adding fresh water and vinegar keeps the pickle from becoming diluted and helps the vegetables stay firm enough to absorb the spiced syrup.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, ginger, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, ginger, mustard. 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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