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Green Tomato Pickle

A pickle made from sliced green tomatoes, onions, garlic, and green pepper pods, seasoned with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash and slice the green tomatoes thinly.

  2. Slice the onions, garlic, and green pepper pods.

  3. Layer the vegetables with coarse sea salt and let them stand overnight.

  4. The next morning, rinse and drain the vegetables well.

Pickle

  1. Mix together the ginger, allspice, mace, celery seed, mixed mustard, turmeric, and sugar.

  2. In a kettle, layer the tomatoes and spice mixture alternately.

  3. Add strong vinegar and boil until tender.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 soften into tender pieces during boiling.
Onions
Add bulk and a mellow sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables overnight, firming them and helping them stay crisp.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Strong vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp tang.
Celery seed
Adds a savoury, aromatic note to the spice blend.

The step that matters

Salting overnight, then rinsing and draining well. Salt pulls water out of the vegetables, so they stay firmer after boiling. Rinsing removes surface salt, and thorough draining keeps excess water from diluting the vinegar.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, garlic, pepper, ginger, allspice, celery):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, garlic, pepper, ginger, allspice, celery. 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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