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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes and onions in a vinegar and spice brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and onions.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and cover with water; let stand overnight.

  3. Drain the mixture in the morning.

  4. Boil the tomatoes and onions in weak vinegar for a few minutes, then drain again.

Make the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, brown sugar, mustard seed, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, and red pepper. Boil for 15 minutes or more.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a stone jar.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 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. 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 absorb the spiced vinegar syrup as they soften.
Onions
Add savory body and soften into the pickle during boiling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that deepens during simmering.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salt soak. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions; draining and rinsing away the excess salt and liquid keeps the pickle from being overly salty and helps it stay firm rather than watery.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, mustard, allspice, clove, cinnamon. 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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