Skip to main content
Main

Green Tomato Pickle

A pickle made from green tomatoes, onions, lemons, spices, vinegar, and sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice green tomatoes and sprinkle salt over them.

  2. Let them stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the liquid.

  4. Slice lemons and onions.

Cook and seal

  1. Layer onions, tomatoes, and spices alternately in a kettle.

  2. Cover with strong vinegar and boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  3. When cold, add sweet oil and seal the pot tightly.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the main bulk and body of the pickle.
Onions
Add sweetness and body that soften during the long boil.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharp vinegar.
Strong vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the mixture and sharpens its flavour.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent flavour and aroma that deepens during cooking.
Sweet oil
Adds richness and a fat layer that helps seal the surface.

The step that matters

Cover with strong vinegar and boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes. The vinegar must fully cover the layers and boil long enough to soften the tomatoes and onions and blend the spices. Boiling too briefly leaves the pickle raw and less stable.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, lemon, mustard, clove, ginger, allspice, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, lemon, mustard, clove, ginger, allspice, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes