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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes in a spiced vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and mix with salt.

  2. Let them stand overnight.

  3. Drain the water from the tomatoes.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine the tomatoes with vinegar, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, ground mustard, sugar, and horseradish.

  2. Simmer the mixture for 10 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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 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
Provide the main body of the pickles, softening slightly in the brine and simmer.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes, firming them and helping preserve them.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity with sweetness and helps the flavor round out.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that stands up to the sweetness and vinegar.

The step that matters

Drain the salted tomatoes. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes overnight. If they are not drained well, excess liquid dilutes the vinegar and sugar syrup, weakening flavor and texture.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, allspice, clove, cinnamon, mustard, sugar, horseradish. 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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