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Spiced Tomatoes

A pickled tomato preparation with vinegar, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 tomatoes

  1. Prick each tomato two or three times with a fork.

  2. Sprinkle the tomatoes with coarse sea salt and let them stand overnight.

  3. Pack the tomatoes into a glass jar.

Pickle and cover

  1. In a saucepan, combine 1 pint of vinegar, ground cloves, ground cinnamon, ground allspice, ground pepper, and sugar.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and pour it over the tomatoes.

  3. Once the tomatoes are cold, cover the jar with strong paper.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pear + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Red and yellow pear-shaped tomatoes
Provide the main body of the pickle, absorbing the spiced vinegar brine as they sit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the tomatoes and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Ground cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour to the brine.
Ground cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aromatic flavour to the brine.

The step that matters

Pricking and salting the tomatoes overnight. Pricking lets the salt and later the spiced vinegar penetrate the skins. Salting draws out some moisture, firming the flesh so it holds its shape in the hot brine rather than going soft.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, allspice, pepper, sugar. 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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