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Tomato Soy

A pickled mixture of green tomatoes and green peppers seasoned with salt, cinnamon, cloves, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Tomato Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes and green peppers finely.

  2. Mix the salt thoroughly with the chopped tomatoes and peppers.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

  4. Drain off the brine.

Spice and pack

  1. Spice the mixture with cinnamon and cloves to taste.

  2. Pack the mixture into a jar.

  3. Cover the mixture with hot vinegar that has been boiled with the spices.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

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 soften as they cure in salt.
Fine salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and helping preserve the mixture.
Green peppers
Add crisp texture and a mildly sharp, vegetal flavor to the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.

The step that matters

Draining off the brine. The salt has drawn out a lot of liquid. Draining it fully keeps the pickle from becoming watery and too salty, and leaves the vegetables firm enough to hold their shape in the jar.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cinnamon, clove, 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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