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Green Tomato Sweet Pickle

A sweet and tangy pickle made from green tomatoes, cider vinegar, brown sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and sprinkle them with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let them sit overnight.

  3. In the morning, pour off the brine and wash the tomatoes in cold water.

Make the pickles

  1. In a pot, combine 1 gallon of cider vinegar and 2.5 pounds of brown sugar.

  2. Boil and skim until clear.

  3. Add the tomatoes to the vinegar mixture.

  4. In a muslin bag, combine the spices: ground cloves, ginger, allspice, mace, mustard, and pepper.

  5. Add the bag to the pot.

  6. Ensure the vinegar covers the tomatoes and spices.

  7. Place a plate on top to keep them submerged.

  8. Boil slowly for at least 6 hours or until the tomatoes are tender.

  9. Do not stir to avoid breaking the pickles.

  10. Once done, store the pickles in jars.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 as they simmer in the spiced vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the sliced tomatoes, firming them before they are cooked.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar's sharpness and deepens the color.
Ground cloves
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boil slowly and do not stir. Long, gentle simmering softens the tomatoes and lets the spices infuse, while stirring can break the tender slices apart and make the pickles mushy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, sugar, clove, ginger, allspice, mace):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, sugar, clove, ginger, allspice, mace. 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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