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Green Tomato Pickle

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the sliced green tomatoes and onions with the coarse sea salt and let sit overnight.

  2. Drain off the liquid and discard it.

Cook

  1. Add the chopped green peppers, grated horseradish, white mustard seed, sugar, and vinegar.

  2. Bring to a boil, stirring gently until the tomatoes are tender.

  3. Add a little cinnamon and cloves, if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Horseradish + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 a tender, chunky texture during cooking.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth that balances the sharp vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the tomatoes and onions overnight, firming them before cooking.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tangy flavour.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of the vinegar and rounds out the sweet-sour balance.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that stands up to the vinegar and sugar.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salt rest. Salt pulls water out of the tomatoes and onions, and discarding that liquid keeps the pickle from tasting overly salty and helps it thicken rather than thin out during cooking.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, pepper, horseradish, mustard, sugar, vinegar. 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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