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Tomato Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made by layering sliced tomatoes with cloves, allspice, mace, sugar, and vinegar, then boiling until soft.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Layer the sliced tomatoes in a porcelain kettle, sprinkling whole spices between the layers.

  2. Add the cloves, allspice, and mace.

  3. Pour the vinegar and sugar over the tomatoes.

  4. Boil until the tomatoes are soft.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Tomato + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together670 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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and soften into a tender, jammy texture when boiled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the vinegar, creates the sweet-sour balance of the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the tomatoes.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickle.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickle.
Mace
Adds a warm, delicate aromatic flavor to the pickle.

The step that matters

Boil until the tomatoes are soft. Boiling long enough softens the tomatoes and lets the sugar and vinegar penetrate and thicken the liquid. Stopping too early leaves firm tomatoes and a thin, sharp syrup.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, clove, allspice, mace. 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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