Skip to main content
Main

Green Tomatoes Pickled Without Boiling

A pickled green tomato and onion relish seasoned with mustard, pepper, and spices, preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Tomatoes Pickled Without Boiling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle the sliced tomatoes and onions with coarse sea salt and let them sit overnight.

  2. Drain the tomatoes and onions until evening.

Make the pickle

  1. Add the chopped green peppers, ground mustard, white mustard seed, cloves, allspice, and black pepper, and mix well.

  2. Pack the mixture into a jar and cover with vinegar.

  3. Let it sit for one month before using.

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. 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
Form the bulk of the pickle and soften slightly during salting and curing.
Onions
Add savory flavour and moisture that mingles with the vinegar during curing.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the vegetables and sharpens the overall flavour.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent bite that develops as the pickle matures.
Ground mustard
Contributes pungency and body to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the tomatoes and onions. Salt draws water out of the sliced vegetables through osmosis. Draining well removes that liquid so the pickle stays crisp and does not dilute the vinegar in the jar.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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

More pickled green tomatoes recipes

Sweet 11and Peppers 3 See all 57 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes