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Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled relish of green tomatoes, onions, and peppers brined in vinegar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Layer the tomatoes, onions, and green peppers in an earthen vessel with salt and let stand overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the mixture for 1 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. Just before removing from heat, add mustard seed and stir gently with a wooden spoon.

Rest and finish

  1. Transfer to an earthen jar and let sit in a cool place for 1 month.

  2. After a month, boil the mixture again with ½ cup of sugar, adjusting to taste.

  3. Remove the spice bag before sealing in jars, and add a red pepper pod if desired.

  4. To prevent breaking, place a long spoon in each jar before filling.

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, softening into tender pieces while holding their shape during cooking.
White onions
Add savoury depth and sweetness that mellows during the long cooking and resting.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp, tangy flavour.
Granulated sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness and rounds out the sweet-sour flavour.
Mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, slightly bitter aroma and crunch that lingers in the finished pickle.

The step that matters

Draining after salting. Salt draws water out of the vegetables overnight; draining off that liquid keeps the pickle from becoming watery and lets the vinegar brine be absorbed instead of diluted.

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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