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Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato relish made with vinegar, salt, spices, sugar, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice green tomatoes.

  2. Sprinkle sliced tomatoes with salt and let them stand overnight.

  3. Drain the water from the tomatoes.

Cook the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine tomatoes, vinegar, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, ground mustard, sugar, and horseradish.

  2. Simmer mixture for 10 minutes.

  3. Taste and add more sugar if desired.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 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
Provide the bulk of the pickle and absorb the vinegar and spice flavours during simmering.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the sliced tomatoes, firming them and reducing excess liquid.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the sweetness.

The step that matters

Drain the salted tomatoes. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes overnight. If the tomatoes are not drained well, the extra liquid dilutes the vinegar and sugar, weakening the pickle's flavour and texture.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, allspice, clove, cinnamon, mustard, sugar, horseradish. 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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