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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with onions, salt, vinegar, sugar, spices, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Layer sliced green tomatoes and onions in a jar, sprinkling each layer with salt.

  2. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  3. Drain the vegetables and add vinegar, brown sugar, cloves, and the muslin bag with cinnamon.

  4. Cook the mixture until the vegetables are tender.

Finish and store

  1. Once cooled, add grated horseradish and mustard seed.

  2. Cover with a plate and a weight, and store in a cool cellar.

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 soften into tender pieces during cooking.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory flavor that balances the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp taste.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth that offsets the acidity of the vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the vegetables, firming them before cooking.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that develops after cooling.

The step that matters

Drain the vegetables after salting. Salting draws out a lot of water; draining well before adding vinegar keeps the liquid from diluting the brine and keeps the pickle firm rather than soggy.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, sugar, clove, cinnamon, horseradish, 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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