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Geeen Tomato Pickles

Pickles made from tomatoes, onions, horseradish, green peppers, and spices, preserved in vinegar and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Geeen Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onions, horseradish, and green peppers.

  2. Place them in a sieve and drain dry.

  3. Layer with coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

Pickle and season

  1. Drain the next day and scald the vinegar.

  2. Pour the vinegar over the mixture and let it stand for 2-3 days.

  3. Drain again and scald the sugar with the vinegar.

  4. Boil the spices in a little vinegar.

  5. Add black pepper, allspice, ground cloves, mustard, and mustard seed.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and release moisture that salting draws out.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming their texture and concentrating flavour.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Onions
Add pungent flavour and body to the mixture.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and bite to the pickle.

The step that matters

Drain the salted vegetables thoroughly before adding vinegar. Salt draws water out overnight; if liquid remains, the pickle will be diluted and less crisp, and the vinegar's flavour and preserving effect are weakened.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, horseradish, pepper, vinegar, sugar, allspice, clove. 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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