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Sweet Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes and onions in a sweet and spicy vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Sweet Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle the sliced tomatoes and onions with salt and let them stand overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the mixture.

  3. Boil the tomatoes and onions in 2 quarts of water and 1 quart of vinegar for 5 minutes, then drain through a colander.

Make the spiced vinegar and finish

  1. In a pot, combine 4 quarts of vinegar, brown sugar, ground mustard, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper or green peppers.

  2. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

  3. Store the pickles in a sealed container; they will keep for a year.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  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 as they cook, taking on the spiced vinegar flavor.
Onions
Add savory flavor and body that softens during salting and boiling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp taste.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness and depth.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes and onions, firming them and helping them stay crisp.

The step that matters

Salting overnight and draining. Salt draws water out of the vegetables by osmosis. Draining them well before adding the hot vinegar keeps the pickles firmer and stops the liquid from diluting the spiced brine.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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