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Salad

Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato and onion relish seasoned with pepper, cloves, allspice, celery seed, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle the sliced tomatoes and onions with salt and let them stand overnight in a crock or enamel vessel.

  2. Tie the black pepper, cloves, allspice, and celery seed in a cheesecloth bag.

  3. Drain the tomatoes and onions well, then add all seasonings except one pepper pod to the vinegar.

  4. Add the drained tomatoes and onions to the vinegar mixture.

Cook and pack

  1. Cook for 30 minutes, stirring gently to prevent burning.

  2. Remove the spice bag to avoid darkening the product.

  3. Pack the mixture into 10 oz jars and garnish with slender strips of the remaining red pepper, placing them vertically on opposite sides of each jar.

Process

  1. Process the jars for 15 minutes.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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, becoming tender and absorbing the spiced vinegar as they cook.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory body that balances the sharp vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes and onions, firming them and concentrating flavor.
Whole black pepper
Adds pungent aroma and heat that infuses into the vinegar.

The step that matters

Remove the spice bag. Leaving the spice bag in too long lets its pigments and oils darken the pickle and make the flavor harsher, so it should come out once the spices have infused.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, allspice, celery, mustard, tomato, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, allspice, celery, mustard, tomato, lemon. 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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