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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes and onions with vinegar, sugar, curry powder, cloves, allspice, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle salt over the sliced tomatoes and onions; let stand overnight.

  2. Drain well and scald in weak vinegar.

Cook

  1. Drain again and cook with vinegar, sugar, curry powder, cloves, allspice, and mustard. Stir often while cooking.

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. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 during salting and cooking.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic flavor as they cook down with the tomatoes.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes and onions overnight, firming the pieces.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar and adds sweetness to the pickle.

The step that matters

Drain well after salting. Salt draws out moisture overnight. If the tomatoes and onions are not drained thoroughly before scalding and cooking, excess water dilutes the vinegar and syrup, weakening the flavor and making the pickle watery.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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