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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with spices, sugar, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Wash green tomatoes and cut them into 2 or 3 slices, depending on size.

  2. Sprinkle salt over tomatoes and stir.

  3. Let stand overnight in a cool place.

  4. Rinse and drain tomatoes.

Cook the pickle

  1. Cover them with vinegar.

  2. Add mustard seed, cloves, pepper, allspice, cinnamon, cayenne, and sliced onions, then stir in sugar.

  3. Cook everything together until tomatoes are soft to your liking.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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, softening during cooking into a tender texture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes overnight, firming them and helping them drain.
Vinegar
Supplies the acidity that preserves the tomatoes and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness and helps the pickle develop body.
Onions
Add savory flavor and soft texture that blends into the pickle as it cooks.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the tomatoes overnight. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes by osmosis. Rinsing and draining afterward removes excess salt and surface moisture, so the pickle is not overly salty and the vinegar can be absorbed properly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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