Name: Green Tomato Pickles
Ingredients: 1 peck green tomatoes; 12 onions; 1 cup coarse sea salt; 2 green peppers; 1 lb brown sugar; 1 tablespoon mustard seed; 1 tablespoon celery seed; ¼ lb pickling spices (whole); vinegar

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the green tomatoes and onions, layering them in a basin with salt between each layer. Use about 1 cup of salt in total.
In the morning, drain off the brine.
Chop the tomatoes, onions, and green peppers, then place them in a skillet.
Add the brown sugar, mustard seed, celery seed, and pickling spices in muslin bags.
Cover with vinegar and cook until tender.

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.

Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, sugar, mustard, celery, vinegar):

Capsicumfits better
Lettucefits better
Horseradishfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, sugar, mustard, celery, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.