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Ripe Tomato Pickles

Pickled ripe tomatoes made with sugar, vinegar, 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 ↓

Ripe Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tomatoes and syrup

  1. Combine the tomatoes, sugar, and vinegar in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the tomatoes and continue boiling the syrup for a few more minutes.

Flavor the syrup

  1. Add the cloves and cinnamon to the syrup to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and release juice that thickens into the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickles.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds sweet, woody aroma and warmth to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup after removing the tomatoes. Boiling the syrup alone concentrates the sugar and vinegar and thickens it. Stopping too early leaves a thin syrup that does not coat the fruit well or keep as well.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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