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Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato and onion mixture flavored with salt, vinegar, sugar, cloves, allspice, ginger, mustard, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and drain

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

  2. In the morning, drain the mixture.

  3. Add water and vinegar to the tomatoes and boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Drain again and discard the vinegar and water.

Spice and cook

  1. Add sugar to the mixture.

  2. Add vinegar to the mixture.

  3. Add cloves, allspice, ginger, mustard and cinnamon to the mixture.

  4. Boil for another 15 minutes.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 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 soften as they cook in the syrup.
Onions
Add savory bulk and sweetness that mellows during long simmering.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the pickle and sharpens its flavor.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickle.

The step that matters

Drain after the first boil. Salting draws water out of the tomatoes and onions, and draining after the first boil removes that liquid along with the salt. Leftover liquid would dilute the vinegar and sugar syrup, making the pickles watery and less well preserved.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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