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Green Tomato Soy

A pickled green tomato dish with onions, peppers, salt, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the tomatoes and onions.

  2. Layer them in a jar, sprinkling salt over each layer, and let them sit overnight.

  3. Tie the spices in a thin bag.

Pickle

  1. In the morning, drain the water from the tomatoes.

  2. Put the tomatoes in hot spiced vinegar and cook until tender.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the main body of the pickle, becoming tender as they cook in the vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes and onions overnight, firming them before pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle, and carries the spice flavour.
Onions
Add savoury depth and sweetness that mellows as they cook in the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salting. Salt has drawn water out of the tomatoes overnight. Draining removes that liquid so the vinegar is not diluted and the pickle keeps its firmness and tang.

Swap the onion

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

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

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