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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with onions, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, allspice, cloves, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the tomatoes and sprinkle with 1 cup of coarse sea salt.

  2. Let stand overnight.

  3. Drain the tomatoes.

Make the pickles

  1. Mix vinegar, sugar, ground mustard, black pepper, allspice, and cloves in a pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the drained tomatoes and onions to the pot.

  3. Cook until tender, stirring often to prevent sticking.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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
Form the bulk of the pickle and, after salting, hold their shape while absorbing the brine.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory flavor that softens and blends into the pickling liquid as they cook.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and rounds out the sweet-sour flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes overnight, firming them and helping them drain.

The step that matters

Cook until tender, stirring often. The sugar-rich, acidic liquid scorches easily on the bottom of the pot. Frequent stirring prevents sticking and burning, and cooking until tender ensures the tomatoes and onions soften and take up the flavor of the pickling liquid.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, allspice, clove. 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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