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Preserve

Green Tomato Pickle

A sweet-spiced pickle of sliced green tomatoes cooked with sugar, vinegar, cloves and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and let them stand overnight with a little salt.

Cook and jar

  1. The next morning, combine sugar, ground cloves, ground cinnamon, whole cloves, and vinegar in a pot and cook until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Add the tomatoes to the mixture and cook thoroughly.

  3. Can the mixture in sterilized jars.

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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provides the bulk and tart flavour of the pickle.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives a sharp tang and helps preserve the pickle.
Ground cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the spiced syrup.

The step that matters

Can the mixture in sterilized jars. Sterilized jars keep spoilage microbes out of the pickle. The acidic, sugary mixture then helps the contents keep well in storage. Jars that are not clean or sealed properly can let the pickle spoil.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, cinnamon, 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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