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Sweet Geeen Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with onions, vinegar, sugar, mustard, cloves, cayenne pepper, and optional green peppers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Sweet Geeen Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice one peck of green tomatoes and six large onions. Sprinkle with one teacup of salt and let stand overnight. Drain in the morning.

  2. Boil two quarts of water and one quart of vinegar with the tomatoes and onions for five minutes. Drain through a colander.

Make the pickling syrup

  1. Combine four quarts of vinegar, two pounds of brown sugar, one-half pound of ground mustard, two tablespoons of cloves, two of ginger, two of cinnamon, one-half teaspoon of cayenne pepper, and optionally five or six green peppers chopped. Boil fifteen minutes.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

142Calories
3 gProtein
1 gFat
32 gCarbs

Counts 9 of 10 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 9 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Tomato1 medium (123g)22
Chili1 tsp (2.7g)8
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Vinegar1 tbsp (15ml) distilled3
Mustard1 tsp (5g) yellow3
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.). 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. See the original page.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 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 and give it a firm, chunky texture.
Onions
Add savory bulk and a mild sweetness that softens during boiling.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that deepens the sweet-sour syrup.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes to the syrup.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salt. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions overnight. Draining them well removes that liquid and excess salt, so the pickle stays firmer and the vinegar syrup is not diluted or overly salty.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, mustard, clove, pepper, onion):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, mustard, clove, pepper, onion. 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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