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Sweet Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato relish sweetened with molasses and vinegar, flavored with cloves and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Sweet Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and layer them in a bowl, sprinkling a handful of coarse sea salt between each layer.

  2. Let the tomatoes stand for 12 hours, then drain off the liquid.

Cook and store

  1. Add the green peppers, sliced onions, vinegar, molasses, cloves, and whole mustard to the drained tomatoes.

  2. Boil the mixture in the vinegar for 10 minutes.

  3. Transfer the pickle into stone 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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 salting draws out their liquid so they stay firm.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and sharpens its flavour.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Onions
Add savoury bulk and aroma as they cook in the vinegar mixture.
Whole mustard
Adds a pungent, tangy note that complements the sweetness.

The step that matters

Drain the salted tomatoes thoroughly. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes through osmosis. Removing that liquid before adding vinegar and sugars keeps the pickle from becoming watery and helps the pieces stay firm when simmered.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, vinegar, molasses, clove, mustard. 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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