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Spiced Tomatoes

A cooked tomato mixture sweetened with sugar and spiced with cloves and mixed spices, simmered with vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,474 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Spiced Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the pulped tomatoes with sugar for 2 hours.

  2. Add vinegar, cloves, and mixed spices.

  3. Boil for an additional hour.

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

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

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

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

  3. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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 preserve and provide the base flavour and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens it as the water cooks off.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and sharpens the spice flavour.
Cloves
Contribute a warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Mixed spices
Add aromatic warmth that rounds out the flavour of the preserve.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar and spices after the first two hours. Sugar and tomato need time to cook down and thicken before the acid and spices go in. Adding them too early can leave the tomato less concentrated and the spice flavour harsh, while the long boil afterward lets everything blend.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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