Name: Green Tomato Sweet Pickles
Ingredients: 8 pounds green tomatoes, sliced thin; 4 pounds brown sugar; 1 quart vinegar; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon cloves; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; 1 teaspoon mace; 2 parts water

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 Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

Place sliced tomatoes in a jar and cover with a mixture of 2 parts water and 1 part vinegar. Let stand overnight.
Drain the tomatoes in the morning.

Cook the pickles

In a pot, combine brown sugar, vinegar, salt, cloves, cinnamon, and mace. Bring to a boil.
Add the drained tomatoes to the pot. Let simmer for 3 hours.
If there is too much syrup, pour it off and boil it down. Repeat this if necessary after 3 or 4 days.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,348 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 body of the pickle, which softens and absorbs the spiced sweet syrup as it simmers.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and thickens the syrup as it cooks down, giving the pickles their body.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the pickles.
Cloves: Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Cinnamon: Contributes warm, sweet aroma and flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling down the syrup. If the syrup is not reduced when there is too much, the pickles stay thin and watery. Boiling concentrates the sugar and vinegar, which thickens the syrup and helps the pickles keep well.

Swap the tomato

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

Capsicumfits better
Mustardfits better
Horseradishfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, mace. 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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Green Tomato Sweet Pickles