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Pickled Tomatoes

Pickled tomatoes made with onions, peppers, sugar, spices, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Pickled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the tomatoes the night before.

  2. Layer the sliced tomatoes in a container, sprinkling a good handful of coarse sea salt between each layer.

  3. In the morning, squeeze the liquid from the tomatoes and add the onions.

Pickle and cook

  1. Cover the mixture with vinegar and bring it to a boil.

  2. Drain off the vinegar, then add 1 gallon of fresh vinegar and the remaining ingredients.

  3. Tie the spices in thin muslin bags and cook until tender.

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. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 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

Tomatoes
Form the main body of the pickle and release moisture when salted.
Onions
Add savory flavor and a soft, tender bite to the pickle.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the spiced pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Squeezing the salted tomatoes before pickling. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes by osmosis. Removing that liquid keeps the fresh vinegar from being diluted, so the brine stays strong and the tomatoes stay firmer.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, sugar, mustard, 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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