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Sweet Green Tomato Pickles

A pickled green tomato and onion relish sweetened with brown sugar and spiced with mustard seed, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon, preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. Slice the green tomatoes and small white onions.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let stand overnight in the brine.

  3. Drain well, then soak in cold water for a few minutes and pour off the water.

Cook and jar

  1. Add enough vinegar to cover the vegetables.

  2. Stir in brown sugar, mustard seed, allspice, whole cloves, and stick cinnamon.

  3. Cook until the pickles are tender.

  4. Pack into jars and seal the jars.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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 firm texture once cooked until tender.
Small white onions
Add mild savory flavor and soft texture that absorbs the spiced vinegar syrup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables during the overnight brine, helping them stay firm and crisp.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth, balancing the acidity of the vinegar.
Mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, slightly bitter aroma that flavors the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Overnight salt brine. Salt draws moisture out of the sliced tomatoes and onions. Draining, rinsing and soaking afterward removes excess salt, so the pickles don't turn too salty or limp when cooked in the vinegar syrup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, mustard, allspice, clove, 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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