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Spanish Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes and onions with sugar, mustard seed, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Spanish Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the green tomatoes and onions.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

  3. Strain off the juice.

Pickle

  1. Add enough vinegar to cover the pickles.

  2. Add the spices wrapped in muslin and boil for half an hour.

  3. Pour the mixture over the pickles.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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 give it a firm texture once salted.
Onions
Add savoury body and aroma to the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp taste.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
White mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, sharp flavour to the spiced liquid.

The step that matters

Salting and straining overnight. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions. Removing this juice before pickling keeps the vegetables firmer and stops the vinegar from being diluted, so the pickle keeps its texture and sharpness.

Swap the onion

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

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

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