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Tomato and Celery Pickle

A pickled mixture of tomatoes, onions, green peppers, celery, sugar, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato and Celery Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onions, green peppers, and celery finely.

  2. Mix all the chopped vegetables together in a large pot.

Cook

  1. Add sugar, vinegar, and salt to the mixture.

  2. Boil the mixture for one and a half hours.

Store

  1. Allow to cool and store in jars.

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 + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 juice that form the base of the pickle.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma as they soften during the long boil.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Celery
Contributes crisp-turned-tender texture and a vegetal, herbal flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture. A long, steady boil reduces the moisture from the vegetables and lets the acid and sugar blend into a thick, well-set pickle. Too short a boil leaves it watery and less stable in storage.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, celery, sugar, vinegar. 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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