Name: Green Tomato Pickles
Ingredients: 1 gallon green tomatoes; ½ cup coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon ground black pepper; 1 tablespoon ground mace; 1 tablespoon ground cloves; 4 pods of peppers, chopped fine; ½ pint grated horseradish; cold cider vinegar; 1 tablespoon sweet oil

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 the tomatoes

Slice the green tomatoes and salt them overnight.

Season and pack

Mix together the black pepper, mace, cloves, chopped peppers, and grated horseradish.
In a stone jar, layer the seasoning and tomatoes alternately until full.
Fill the jar with cold cider vinegar and add the sweet oil last.

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.

Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Clove + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,245 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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 bulk of the pickle and absorb the brine and seasoning flavors as they sit.
Coarse sea salt: Draws moisture out of the sliced tomatoes, firming them and seasoning them before pickling.
Cold cider vinegar: Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Grated horseradish: Adds sharp, pungent heat that mellows as the pickle matures.

Swap the mace

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

Allspicefits better
Thymefits better
Tarragonfits better
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.