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Green to Ma to Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made from green tomatoes simmered in a vinegar and sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green to Ma to Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pare the green tomatoes.

  2. Boil the tomatoes in ½ cup vinegar and ½ cup water for 30 minutes.

  3. Drain the tomatoes.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with 1 pint strong vinegar and 1 pound brown sugar.

  2. Spice the syrup with whole cinnamon, mace, and ginger-root to taste.

  3. Boil the syrup for 20 minutes.

Pickle and jar

  1. Place the tomatoes in the syrup.

  2. Boil the tomatoes in the syrup for 45 minutes.

  3. Transfer the pickled tomatoes to preserve jars.

  4. Cover the jars with syrup.

  5. Seal the jars when cool.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,887 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the firm base that holds its shape through long simmering in syrup.
Brown sugar
Makes the syrup sweet and adds molasses depth to the pickle.
Vinegar
Supplies the sharp acidity that preserves the tomatoes and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Boil the tomatoes in the syrup for 45 minutes. Simmering long enough lets the syrup penetrate the tomato flesh and the acid keep it stable. Boiling too hard can break the tomatoes apart, so keep a gentle simmer.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, ginger):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, ginger. 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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