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Green Tomato Pickles

A pickled green tomato relish with onions, peppers, horseradish, mustard seeds, spices, sugar, and wine vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select tomatoes that are beginning to turn white, slice them, and lay them in salt for 24 hours.

  2. Drain the tomatoes and place them in a granite or porcelain-lined kettle.

  3. Add the chopped peppers, onions, and horseradish, then sprinkle the mustard seeds over the mixture.

  4. Tie the cloves, cinnamon, peppercorns, and nutmeg in a thin muslin bag and add it to the kettle.

Cook

  1. Cover the vegetables with wine vinegar and boil until tender and clear in appearance.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 tender pieces during boiling.
Onions
Add savory flavour and body to the pickled vegetable mixture.
Bell peppers
Contribute mild sweetness, crunch-to-tender texture and bulk to the pickle.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that mellows during cooking.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.

The step that matters

Boil until tender and clear. Boiling must run long enough to soften the tomatoes and peppers fully and release their pectin and starch so the liquid turns clear. Stopping early leaves firm, cloudy pieces.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, pepper, horseradish, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, pepper, horseradish, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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