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Green Tomato Pickle

Pickled green tomatoes with onions, peppers, vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the tomatoes, onions, and peppers.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

Cook and pack

  1. In the morning, boil the vegetables with 2 quarts of water and 1 quart of vinegar, then drain again.

  2. Boil for half an hour with 2 quarts of vinegar, 1 lb of brown sugar, 1 teaspoon each of cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 in the brine, absorbing the sweet-sour syrup.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body that softens during the long simmer.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the pickles and balances the sugar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth that offsets the vinegar's sharpness.

The step that matters

Overnight salting. Salt draws water out of the sliced vegetables through osmosis, firming them so they stay crisp rather than turning mushy during boiling. Letting them stand the full time gives the salt enough time to work through the pieces.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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