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Spanish Pickle

A pickled green tomato relish with onions, pepper, sugar, mustard, spices, cloves, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Spanish Pickle

Why it works: Pepper and clove 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 ↓

Spanish Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine sliced green tomatoes, coarse sea salt, chopped onions, and green pepper.

  2. Let the mixture drip overnight.

Cook and jar

  1. Add white mustard, spices, cloves, and sugar to the drained mixture.

  2. Pour in enough vinegar to cover the ingredients.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a jar.

  5. Add more vinegar to ensure it is fully covered.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 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
Main bulk of the pickle; their firm flesh holds shape and absorbs the brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes and onions, firming them and concentrating flavor.
Onions
Add savory sharpness and body that softens and blends into the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the mixture and gives it its tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Draining overnight after salting. Salt pulls water out of the tomatoes and onions; if they are not drained well, the excess liquid dilutes the vinegar and the pickle can taste watery and spoil more easily.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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