Skip to main content
Main

Canning Tomatoes At Home and in Club Wokk

A method for canning green tomatoes with onions, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Canning Tomatoes At Home and in Club Wokk

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and onions.

  2. Layer the tomatoes and onions in a colander, sprinkling each layer with salt.

  3. Let them drain overnight.

  4. In the morning, place them in an enameled kettle with allspice, cloves, and cinnamon bark.

  5. Press down and add enough vinegar to cover.

Cook and seal

  1. Cook until tender.

  2. Put into jars and seal while hot.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 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
Provide the bulk of the preserve and its tart, firm body once cooked.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body that softens as the mixture cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the preserve its tang and helps keep it stable.
Whole allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour as the mixture simmers.
Whole cloves
Contributes strong aromatic spice flavour as the mixture simmers.
Cinnamon bark
Contributes sweet, woody aroma and warm spice flavour.

The step that matters

Salting and draining overnight. Salt draws water out of the sliced tomatoes and onions through osmosis. Draining removes that liquid, so the pieces stay firmer and the final preserve is less watery.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, allspice, clove, cinnamon, vinegar. 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.

More canned tomatoes recipes

and Corn 3 See all 51 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes