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Sweet Pickled Tomatoes

A sweet pickled green tomato and onion relish made with vinegar, sugar, spices, and red peppers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 ↓

Sweet Pickled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and onions.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and let sit overnight.

  3. Drain off the liquid.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, brown sugar, allspice, mustard seed, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, mustard, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Boil for 15-20 minutes.

  3. Add the red peppers and horseradish to the mixture.

Pickle

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the tomatoes and onions, ensuring they are 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.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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 while absorbing the spiced vinegar.
Onions
Add sweetness and body that softens as the salted vegetables pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness and depth.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during simmering.
Salt
Draws water out of the sliced vegetables, firming them before pickling.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salting. Salt draws out a lot of liquid; if the vegetables are not well drained, the pickling liquid is diluted and the pickle can turn watery and less crisp.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, sugar, allspice, mustard, clove, ginger. 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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