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Green Tomato Pickle

A pickle of thinly sliced green tomatoes preserved with salt, onions, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle sliced green tomatoes with coarse sea salt and let them stand for 2 days.

  2. In a bowl, mix together onions, mustard, white mustard seed, turmeric, cloves, ground pepper, and allspice.

Cook

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

  2. Cover the layers with vinegar and let them simmer for 1 hour.

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. Clove + allspicetop 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. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turmeric + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Turmeric + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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, after salting, a firm texture that holds up to simmering.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the sliced tomatoes, firming them and concentrating their flavor before cooking.
Onions
Add sweetness and body that softens into the pickle during simmering.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp tang.
White mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during simmering in the vinegar.

The step that matters

Salting the tomatoes for 2 days. Salt draws moisture out of the tomato slices over time. Rinsing or skipping this rest leaves excess water in the kettle, which dilutes the vinegar and leaves the pickle soft and watery.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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