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Tomato Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made from green tomatoes, onions, peppers, brown sugar, cloves, cinnamon, vinegar, and lime.

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 ↓

Tomato Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Dissolve 1 pint of lime in a bucket of water, pour off the water, and soak the tomatoes in it overnight.

  2. Soak the tomatoes in clear water the next day.

  3. Cover the tomatoes with salt and pour boiling water over them; let stand overnight.

  4. Soak the tomatoes in clear water until some of the salt is removed.

Cook

  1. Combine all ingredients in a kettle, pour vinegar over, and cook until done.

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. Pepper + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Cinnamon + limetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together470 recipes

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

  5. Clove + limetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together909 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
Form the bulk of the pickle and absorb the sweet, spiced flavors during cooking.
Onions
Add savory depth and body to the pickle as they cook down.
Green peppers
Contribute fresh, slightly bitter flavor and some texture to the finished pickle.
Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps keep it preserved.
Lime
Firms the tomato flesh during the long soaking before cooking.

The step that matters

Rinsing the tomatoes after the salt soak. Rinsing in clear water until some of the salt is removed matters because leftover salt would make the finished pickle overly salty and harsh. Lime soaking also needs to be washed out so the tomatoes firm without tasting caustic.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, sugar, clove, cinnamon, vinegar, lime. 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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