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Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato relish with onions, peppers, vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the vegetables

  1. Layer the tomatoes, onions, and peppers in an earthen vessel, sprinkling salt between layers.

  2. Let sit overnight.

  3. Drain the vegetables for an hour.

Cook the pickle

  1. Pour 3 pints of cider vinegar over the vegetables.

  2. Add ½ cup of sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and the bag of allspice.

  3. Cook gently for 30 minutes after boiling begins, keeping the cover partly off.

  4. Stir in 1 ounce of mustard seed with a wooden spoon just before removing from heat.

  5. Add a red pepper pod if desired.

Age and finish

  1. Transfer the mixture to an earthen jar.

  2. Let sit in a cool place for a month.

  3. Boil the mixture again with an additional ½ cup of sugar after a month.

  4. Adjust the sugar to taste.

  5. Remove the spice bag before sealing 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. Clove + cinnamontop 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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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, once salted and drained, give it a firm, tangy texture.
White onions
Add savory flavor and moisture that blends into the vinegar brine.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Granulated sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and rounds out the sweet-sour flavor.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the vegetables, firming them and seasoning them before pickling.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, slightly bitter aroma and flavor to the brine.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the vegetables. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions, and draining removes it. Skipping or shortening this leaves excess liquid that dilutes the brine and softens the pickle.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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