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Sweet Vegetable Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes, onions, and green peppers sweetened with sugar, cinnamon, cloves, mustard seed, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Sweet Vegetable Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash and dry the tomatoes, then cut them into thin slices.

  2. Peel the onions and cut them to suit your taste.

  3. Cut the green peppers into small pieces, removing the seeds.

  4. Layer the tomato slices in a large pan and sprinkle with salt.

  5. Let the mixture sit for 24 hours.

  6. Drain off the liquid, pressing down on the cover to remove excess moisture.

Cook and store

  1. Combine the drained vegetables with vinegar in a preserving kettle.

  2. Add brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and mustard seed to the kettle.

  3. Boil the mixture for about 15 minutes.

  4. Transfer the pickles into pots or jars for storage.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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, once salted, release moisture that must be drained off.
Onions
Add savory flavor and bulk, softening as the pickle cooks.
Green peppers
Add crisp texture and a fresh, mildly bitter vegetal note.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Draining after the salt rest. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions over 24 hours. Pressing off the liquid removes that moisture, so the pickle stays firm and the vinegar syrup is not diluted.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, sugar, cinnamon, clove, mustard, 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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