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Sweet Chopped Pickles

A sweet pickle made from chopped green and ripe tomatoes, cabbage, onions, peppers, brown sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Sweet Chopped Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, ripe tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and peppers finely.

  2. Place the chopped vegetables in a thin bag and hang to drain for 48 hours.

Cook and store

  1. Transfer the drained vegetables to a preserving kettle.

  2. Cover the vegetables with vinegar and add the brown sugar, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, mace, and celery seed.

  3. Boil the mixture for 2 hours.

  4. Store the pickles in fruit 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Green tomatoes
Supply the bulk of the pickle and firm, tart body once cooked down.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a crisp-tender texture to the pickled mixture.

The step that matters

Draining the chopped vegetables for 48 hours. Draining removes excess moisture from the vegetables, so the pickle does not become watery and dilute the vinegar and sugar syrup during boiling.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cabbage, pepper, sugar, allspice, clove, 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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