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French Tomato Pickle

A pickled tomato relish made with sliced tomatoes, onions, vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

French Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle salt over the sliced tomatoes and onions and let them sit overnight.

  2. Drain the tomatoes and onions well.

Scald and simmer

  1. Scald them in weak vinegar for 10 to 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the tomatoes and onions again.

  3. Scald them with strong vinegar, sugar, curry powder, turmeric, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and mustard.

  4. Simmer all ingredients together slowly for a few 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 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. Turmeric + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and absorb the vinegar and spices as they soften.
Onions
Add savoury body and sweetness that softens during long cooking in the vinegar.
Strong vinegar
Acidity that preserves the pickle and sharpens the flavour of the spices.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and rounds out the spiced flavour.
Curry powder
Contributes warm, earthy spice aroma that defines the pickle's character.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes and onions so they drain and firm up.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salting. Salt draws out much of the vegetables' water. Draining them well removes excess liquid, so the pickle stays firm and the vinegar and spices are not diluted in the final simmer.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, turmeric, cinnamon, clove, allspice. 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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