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Pickled Tomatoes

A pickled green tomato dish with onions, spices, vinegar, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Pickled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the green tomatoes into an earthenware pan and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let the tomatoes sit until the next day, then drain off the salt.

Cook

  1. Put the tomatoes into a preserving pan and add vinegar, sugar, onions, and spices.

  2. Simmer very gently until tender, about 30 minutes.

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. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + clovetop 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 main bulk and texture of the pickle as they soften during simmering.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the tomatoes and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Demerara sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness and helps the pickle thicken as it cooks.
Onions
Add savoury depth and body to the pickle as they soften in the vinegar and sugar.
Cloves
Contribute warm aromatic flavour to the pickle.

The step that matters

Salting the tomatoes overnight. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes through osmosis, so they lose liquid and firm up. Draining the salt off before cooking keeps the pickle from tasting overly salty.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, vinegar, 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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