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Sweet Green Tomato Pickles

A pickled green tomato recipe with sugar and spices.

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 ↓

Sweet Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Combine sliced green tomatoes and brown sugar in a bowl.

  2. Let the mixture stand until juicy.

Cook

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pot and boil slowly until the tomatoes are tender.

  2. In a separate pot, heat the cider vinegar with cloves, mace, and cinnamon.

  3. Pour the heated vinegar mixture over the tomatoes.

  4. Cook for an additional 15 minutes.

Jar

  1. Cool the pickles.

  2. Transfer them to jars, sealing them tightly.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Provide the bulk of the pickle and become tender and translucent as they cook.
Brown sugar
Draws juice out of the tomatoes and adds sweetness that balances the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Whole cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the vinegar syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand until juicy. Salting or sugaring sliced tomatoes draws out their water through osmosis, and this liquid must form before boiling. Cooking without that standing time can scorch the sugar on the bottom of the pot and leave the pickle thin and uneven.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cider, vinegar, clove, mace, cinnamon. 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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