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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with onions, mustard seed, black pepper, allspice, cloves, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the tomatoes

  1. Layer the sliced green tomatoes in jars, sprinkling salt between each layer.

  2. Let the jars sit for 24 hours.

  3. Squeeze out all the salt water from the tomatoes.

Combine and cook

  1. In a bowl, mix the sliced onions, mustard seed, black pepper, allspice, and cloves.

  2. In a preserving kettle, layer the tomatoes, onion mixture, and spices until the kettle is within 2 inches of being full.

  3. Cover the layers with vinegar.

  4. Let them stew gently for 2 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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 pickle and, once salted and drained, a firm texture that holds up to stewing.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes, firming them and reducing the liquid that would dilute the pickle.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body that softens into the stewed vinegar layers.
White mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during the long stewing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tart bite.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the salt water. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes. If too much liquid stays in, the pickle becomes watery and diluted, so the tomatoes should be well drained before they are layered with the spices and vinegar.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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

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