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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with onions, cloves, vinegar, treacle, and mustard seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Sprinkle coarse sea salt between the layers of sliced tomatoes and let them stand for 12 hours.

  2. Drain off the liquid from the tomatoes.

  3. Add the sliced onions to the tomatoes.

Make the pickle

  1. Combine cloves, vinegar, treacle, and mustard seed in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a near boil.

  3. Add the tomatoes and onions to the pot.

  4. Boil for 10 minutes.

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

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 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
Provide the main bulk and texture of the pickle once salted and cooked.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the tomatoes, firming them and reducing their moisture before cooking.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavour.
Treacle
Adds sweetness and a dark, rich colour and flavour that balances the vinegar.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury flavour that softens during the boil.

The step that matters

Drain off the liquid from the tomatoes. Salt draws a lot of water out of the tomatoes. If this liquid is not drained, it dilutes the vinegar and treacle mixture, which can weaken the flavour and the preserving acidity of the pickle.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, vinegar, molasses, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, vinegar, molasses, mustard. 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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