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Sweet Green Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes (or other fruits) with sweet and spicy seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Sweet Green Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the green tomatoes or other fruits and onions if desired.

  2. Sprinkle layers with coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

Cook

  1. Drain the mixture and boil in 2 quarts of water and 1 quart of vinegar; drain again.

  2. Boil the fruit for 15 minutes in a mixture of brown sugar, strong vinegar, green mustard, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, and mango peppers.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 absorb the brine and syrup flavours.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the sliced fruit, firming its texture before cooking.
Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the syrup that the fruit cooks in.
Strong vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the pickle and sharpens its flavour.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the fruit for 15 minutes in the syrup. Boiling for the stated time softens the fruit and lets the sugar, vinegar and spices penetrate it. Too short a boil leaves the pickle raw and under-flavoured, while overcooking can turn the slices mushy.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, vinegar, sugar, mustard, clove, ginger, cinnamon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, mustard, clove, ginger, 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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