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Cooked Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato dish with mustard seed, sugar, cloves, allspice, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cooked Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and sprinkle with salt.

  2. Let them sit for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the tomatoes and allow them to dry.

Cook the pickle

  1. In a porcelain kettle, combine the tomatoes, mustard seed, sugar, cloves, and allspice.

  2. Cover the mixture with vinegar and boil for 1 hour, stirring well.

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. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Tomato + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 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 soften into a tender, jam-like texture as they cook.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes, firming them and helping them keep their shape.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that stands up to the sweetness and vinegar.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and helps preserve the pickle with sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Cover the mixture with vinegar and boil for 1 hour, stirring well.. Stirring keeps the tomatoes from sticking and scorching on the bottom of the kettle during the long boil. The vinegar must fully cover the mixture so the acid reaches every piece.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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