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Green Tomatoes

Pickled green tomatoes seasoned with mustard, cloves, allspice, ginger, pepper, brown sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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 ↓

Green Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Layer the green tomatoes with ½ pint of coarse sea salt and let them sit for 12 hours.

  2. Drain the tomatoes for 4 hours.

Make the spice mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix ½ pound of white mustard seed, 1 ounce each of ground cloves, allspice, ginger, and black pepper, ¼ pound of table mustard, and 1 pound of brown sugar.

Pickle and seal

  1. In a kettle, layer the tomatoes with the spice mixture and onions.

  2. Cover with strong vinegar and boil until the tomatoes are soft and clear.

  3. Transfer the pickle to jars and seal to keep it from air exposure.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 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
Main vegetable that softens and turns clear as it cooks in the vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes so they drain and firm up before pickling.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour to the spice blend.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Strong vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and flavours the pickle.

The step that matters

Draining after salting. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes; draining well for the full time removes that liquid so the pickle does not become watery and the vinegar flavour concentrates properly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, clove, allspice, ginger, pepper, sugar, 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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