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Spiced Tomatoes

Preserved tomatoes flavored with vinegar, sugar, salt, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and cayenne.

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. Wash and peel the tomatoes, add 2 cups of vinegar, and let them stand overnight.

  2. Drain the tomatoes and reserve the liquid.

Make and cook the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by combining the brown sugar, vinegar, and reserved liquid from the tomatoes.

  2. Add the salt and spices (tied in cheesecloth) to the syrup, then add the tomatoes.

  3. Cook slowly until thick, about 2 to 3 hours.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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
Provide the bulk and fresh acidity that the sugar and vinegar balance.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the tomatoes.
Brown sugar
Sweetens and thickens the syrup as it cooks down, adding depth of flavor.
Whole cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Whole allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Stick cinnamon
Adds sweet, woody aroma to the syrup as it simmers.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until thick. Long, gentle cooking lets water evaporate and sugars concentrate, which thickens the syrup. Cooking too hard can scorch the sugar on the bottom of the pot before the tomatoes are properly thick.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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