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Sweet Tomato Pickles

A pickled mixture of green tomatoes and apples flavored with cloves, allspice, peppers, cinnamon, vinegar, and sugar.

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 ↓

Sweet Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stick 2 cloves into each apple quarter.

  2. Tie all spices in muslin bags.

Cook

  1. In a large pot, combine vinegar, sugar, and spice bags; bring to a boil.

  2. Add tomatoes and apples; boil until tender.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and soften into a tender, chunky texture when boiled.
Apples
Add body and natural pectin that helps the mixture thicken as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sharp tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Provides sweetness that balances the vinegar and forms a thick syrup with the cooking liquid.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses the vinegar syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the tomatoes and apples until tender. The fruit must cook long enough for its cell walls to soften so it becomes tender and absorbs the spiced syrup. Undercooked tomatoes stay firm and tough, while overcooking can break the pieces down into mush.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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