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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with onions, mustard seed, pepper, cloves, ginger, mustard, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle sliced green tomatoes with coarse sea salt and let rest for 24 hours.

  2. Drain the tomatoes and mix with sliced onions.

Make the pickles

  1. Combine mustard seed, ground pepper, cloves, ground ginger, and ground mustard in a bowl.

  2. In a preserving kettle, layer the tomatoes and spice mixture alternately.

  3. Add moist sugar and cover with vinegar.

  4. Boil gently until the mixture is transparent.

  5. Let cool before using.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, once salted, release water so they soften and keep their shape.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and spices.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Onions
Add savory flavor and body to the layered mixture.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, sharp aroma and bite to the spice blend.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the mixture is transparent. Boiling too hard can break down the thin tomato slices into mush and scorch the sugar. Gentle heat lets the vegetables soften evenly while absorbing the vinegar and sugar syrup.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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