Skip to main content
Main

Sweet Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with onions, preserved in a vinegar solution.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sweet Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the vegetables

  1. Layer the sliced tomatoes and onions in a bowl, sprinkling salt over them. Let them sit overnight.

Cook the pickles

  1. In the morning, combine water and vinegar in a pot and bring to a boil. Boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the vegetables before proceeding.

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

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

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 and body of the pickle, softening into a tender texture as they cook.
Onions
Add aroma and a mild sweetness that deepens as they cook.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and the sharp tang that defines the pickle.

The step that matters

Drain the vegetables before proceeding. The overnight salting draws a lot of liquid and salt out of the vegetables. Draining off that excess keeps the pickle from becoming too salty and watery.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes