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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with onions, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the tomatoes and remove any spots.

  2. Slice the tomatoes.

Salt and drain

  1. Layer the sliced tomatoes with onions and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Repeat the layers until all ingredients are used.

  3. In the morning, drain off the juice.

Cook and store

  1. Put the tomatoes and onions in a porcelain-lined kettle with vinegar and simmer gently for twenty minutes.

  2. Store in stone or glass jars.

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. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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, once cooked, give it its texture.
Sliced onions
Add sweetness and savour that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes and onions so they drain before cooking.

The step that matters

Drain off the juice in the morning. Salting draws water out of the vegetables. Pouring off that liquid before cooking keeps the pickle firm and stops it from turning watery and diluted once it simmers in vinegar.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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