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Pyfer Pickles

Pickles made from green tomatoes and onions, sweetened with sugar and spiced with mustard, cayenne, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pyfer Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Salt the chopped tomatoes and onions and let them stand overnight.

Make the pickle

  1. Add 2 quarts of vinegar and boil for 15 minutes, then drain off the liquid.

  2. Stir in 1.5 pounds of sugar, 3 pints of vinegar, mustard seed, cayenne pepper, and ground mustard.

  3. Add cinnamon, cloves, and ginger to taste.

  4. Boil the mixture for a few moments longer, then put it in jars.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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 absorb the salted brine and vinegar flavor.
Onions
Add pungent flavor and body that softens during the long salting and boiling.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and gives the pickle its tang.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavor and crunch to the pickle.

The step that matters

Drain off the liquid after boiling. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions, and the drained brine must be fully removed before the new vinegar and sugar are added. Leftover salty liquid would make the pickle overly salty and dilute the vinegar's acidity.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, cinnamon, clove. 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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