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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with onions, spices, sugar, horseradish, alum, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and sprinkle a little coarse sea salt over them.

  2. Let them drain overnight.

  3. Slice the onions.

Pack and seal

  1. In a jar, layer the tomatoes, then the onions, followed by mixed spices, brown sugar, horseradish, and a lump of alum.

  2. Pour vinegar over the layers and bring to a boil.

  3. Seal the jar.

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. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + horseradishtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together415 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 and drained, give it a firm texture.
Onions
Add savory bulk and sweetness that mellows as the pickle sits.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness and helps give the pickle its color and depth.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.
Alum
Helps the tomatoes stay firm and crisp during cooking and storage.

The step that matters

Draining the salted tomatoes overnight. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes through osmosis. Draining removes that liquid, so the pickle stays firm rather than watery and the vinegar brine is not diluted.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, sugar, horseradish, 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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