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Green Tomato Pickle

A pickle made from green tomatoes, onions, mustard, and spices, preserved in cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Sprinkle sliced tomatoes generously with coarse sea salt and let them stand for 2 days.

  2. Drain off the water from the tomatoes.

Layer and cook

  1. In a bowl, mix sliced onions, mustard, white mustard seeds, white cloves, and celery seed.

  2. In a preserving kettle, layer the tomatoes, onion mixture, and spices.

  3. Cover with cider vinegar and cook very slowly until the tomatoes are clear.

Jar

  1. Transfer to small jars and seal tightly for better preservation.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

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

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, once salted and cooked, turn translucent and tender.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes, firming them and reducing the liquid in the final pickle.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body that blends into the pickle as it cooks.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickle.
White mustard seeds
Add sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during slow cooking.

The step that matters

Cook very slowly until the tomatoes are clear. Slow heating lets the tomatoes soften and turn translucent without breaking apart or scorching on the bottom of the kettle. Rapid boiling tends to break down the slices into mush and can burn the sugars and spices against the pan.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, mustard, clove, celery, 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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