Name: Sweet Green-tomato Pickles
Ingredients: 6 pounds green tomatoes; 1 quart vinegar; 3 pounds sugar; cinnamon (to taste); allspice (to taste); mace (to taste)

Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Green-tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Slice the green tomatoes.

Make the syrup

Boil the vinegar and sugar together.
Add cinnamon, allspice, and mace for flavor.

Cook and store

Put in the sliced tomatoes and boil for 15 minutes.
Transfer the mixture to stone 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.

Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,189 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,348 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 absorb the sweet-sour syrup as they cook.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it a sharp contrast to the sweetness.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar and helps build a thick, syrupy liquid.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, mace):

Mustardfits better
Capsicumfits better
Horseradishfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, mace. 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.