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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes seasoned with pepper, mace, cloves, peppers, horseradish, and sweet oil in cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and salt them overnight.

  2. Mix the black pepper, mace, cloves, chopped peppers, and grated horseradish in a bowl.

Pack and seal

  1. In a stone jar, layer the seasoning and tomatoes alternately until full.

  2. Pour cold cider vinegar over the top, then add sweet oil.

  3. Seal the jar and let it sit for flavor development.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Clove + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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 body of the pickle, absorbing the brine and seasoning as they sit.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the tomatoes and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Grated horseradish
Adds pungent heat that mellows and spreads through the jar as it sits.
Ground black pepper
Contributes sharp, warm spice that seasons the tomatoes throughout.

The step that matters

Salting the tomatoes overnight. Salt draws water out of the sliced tomatoes through osmosis, firming them and seasoning them evenly. Skipping or shortening this step leaves the tomatoes wetter and less seasoned, which can dilute the pickle.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, clove, horseradish, cider, vinegar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, clove, horseradish, cider, 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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