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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with onions, vinegar, salt, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and sprinkle with salt. Place in a colander and let drain overnight.

  2. In the morning, combine vinegar, water, and sliced onions in a pot. Add the drained tomatoes and boil for 15 minutes.

Make the pickles

  1. Drain the mixture again. In a large pot, combine the remaining vinegar, brown sugar, mustard seed, allspice, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves.

  2. Add the tomatoes and onions to the pot and boil 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.

  1. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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 soften as they cook in the spiced vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it a sharp, tangy flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and body that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Onions
Add savory flavor and soften into the pickling liquid.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavor that stands up to the sweet and sour base.

The step that matters

Drain the salted tomatoes overnight. Salt draws water out of the sliced tomatoes through osmosis. Skipping or shortening this drain leaves excess liquid that dilutes the vinegar syrup and produces a softer, watery pickle.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, onion, sugar, mustard, allspice, cinnamon, ginger):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, onion, sugar, mustard, allspice, cinnamon, ginger. 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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