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Green Tomato Pickles

A pickled green tomato dish seasoned with salt, onions, vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Place green tomatoes in a vessel and sprinkle with a handful of coarse sea salt. Cover with boiling water and let stand until cold.

  2. Slice the tomatoes transversely once or twice, depending on their size.

Pickle and rest

  1. Layer the sliced tomatoes in a crock with thin-sliced onions.

  2. Prepare the vinegar with cloves, cinnamon, and allspice, then pour it hot over the tomatoes. Cover and set aside for a few days before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Firm, unripe base that holds its shape and turns tangy as it pickles.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the tomatoes and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma that mellow the sharpness of the vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes, firming their texture before pickling.

The step that matters

Salting and cooling the tomatoes. Salt drawn into the tomatoes pulls out excess water and firms the flesh. Pouring boiling water over them and letting them cool gently softens the surface without cooking them through, so they stay crisp in the brine.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, allspice. 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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