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Preserve

Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato and onion relish seasoned with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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. Slice the tomatoes and onions thinly.

  2. Sprinkle ½ cup of coarse sea salt over them and let stand overnight in a crock or enameled vessel.

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

  4. Slice the lemon and finely chop two red pepper pods.

  5. Drain the tomatoes and onions well.

Cook and jar

  1. Add all seasonings except one red pepper pod to the vinegar, then add the tomatoes and onions.

  2. Cook for 30 minutes, stirring gently at intervals to prevent burning.

  3. Remove the spice bag to prevent darkening the product.

  4. Pack into 10-ounce jars and garnish with slender strips of the red pepper, placing them vertically on opposite sides of each jar.

  5. Process 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 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 and soften slightly during cooking while holding their shape.
Onions
Add sweetness and body that balances the sharp vinegar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the acidity of the 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 so they stay firmer in the brine.

The step that matters

Drain the tomatoes and onions well. Salted vegetables release a lot of liquid. Excess water dilutes the vinegar and brine, weakening the pickle and making it less firm.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, lemon, pepper, vinegar, clove, allspice. 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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