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Sweet Pickles

A sweet pickle made from green tomatoes, onions, raisins, and spices in a sugar‑vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 ↓

Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle salt over the sliced tomatoes and onions and let them stand overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the tomatoes and onions.

Make the pickles

  1. Combine vinegar, brown sugar, allspice, and cloves in a pot and heat until warm.

  2. Add the drained tomatoes and onions to the pot and cook until 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

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 into a tender, jammy texture as they cook.
Onions
Add savory depth and soften during cooking to blend into the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the pickle and balances the sweetness.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth that offsets the vinegar's sharpness.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the sliced vegetables, firming them and concentrating their flavor before cooking.

The step that matters

Draining after the salt rest. Salting overnight pulls water out of the tomatoes and onions. If they are not drained well, excess liquid dilutes the vinegar syrup and makes the pickle watery and less concentrated.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Cherryfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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