Skip to main content
Main

Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato relish with onions, peppers, spices, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onions, and green peppers.

  2. Cover with coarse sea salt and let stand for several hours.

  3. At night, place in a jelly bag to drip.

  4. The next morning, discard the liquid.

Cook

  1. Add the remaining ingredients and boil for about one hour.

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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Turmeric + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Turmeric + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Make up the bulk of the pickle and supply its tart, fresh base.
Onions
Add savory depth and moisture that softens during the long boil.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the green tomatoes.
Green peppers
Contribute bulk, a mild vegetable bite, and moisture to the pickle.
Ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma that complements the sweet and sour flavors.

The step that matters

Draining after salting. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables, and the drained liquid must be fully discarded so the pickle does not turn watery. Draining the vegetables thoroughly lets the boil concentrate the flavors rather than dilute them.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, turmeric, ginger, sugar, celery, nutmeg):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, turmeric, ginger, sugar, celery, nutmeg. 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 Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes