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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with onions, horseradish, peppers, and spices in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 the vegetables

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onions, horseradish, and green peppers, then put them in a sieve and drain well.

  2. Layer with coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

  3. Drain again the next day.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Scald the vinegar and pour it over the mixture, let it stand for 2-3 days and drain again.

  2. In a pot, scald the sugar with the vinegar.

  3. Add black pepper, allspice, ground cloves, mustard, and mustard seed, and boil the spices in a little vinegar.

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. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 give it its main texture once salted and drained.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves and flavours the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the pickle.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, sharp flavour and crunch to the spiced liquid.

The step that matters

Draining after salting. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables through osmosis. Draining them thoroughly removes that liquid so the pickle stays crisp and the vinegar liquid is not diluted.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, horseradish, pepper, vinegar, sugar, 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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