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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with onions, spices, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle green tomatoes and sliced onions with coarse sea salt and let them stand overnight.

  2. Drain the tomatoes and onions.

Pack and pickle

  1. Layer the tomatoes, onions, and spices in a jar.

  2. Wet the mustard before adding it to the layers.

  3. Cover the layers with vinegar.

  4. Boil the mixture for 20 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. 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
Form the bulk of the pickle, with a firm texture that holds up to brining and boiling.
Onions
Add savory bulk and sweetness that mellows during salting and boiling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes and onions, firming them and seasoning the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavor.
White mustard seed
Adds a pungent, slightly bitter flavor that deepens as the spices steep.

The step that matters

Salting overnight. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions through osmosis. Draining well afterward keeps the pickle firm and stops excess water from diluting the vinegar.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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