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Preserve

Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled mixture of green and ripe tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, onions, cabbage, celery, horseradish, and spices in vinegar and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, ripe tomatoes, red peppers, green peppers, yellow cucumbers, onions, cabbages, celery, and horseradish separately.

  2. Salt the chopped vegetables to taste and let them drain overnight.

Make and seal the pickles

  1. In the morning, add 1 gallon of vinegar, 2 pounds of brown sugar, ½ ounce of turmeric, 4 tablespoons of white mustard seed, and 2 tablespoons of ground cinnamon.

  2. Cook the mixture for 30 minutes and seal while hot.

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. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 hold their shape as the vegetables cook.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
White mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavour that deepens during cooking.
Cabbages
Add bulk and a crisp texture to the mixed vegetables.

The step that matters

Salting and draining overnight. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables through osmosis. Draining well before cooking keeps the pickle from becoming watery and diluting the vinegar brine.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cucumber, onion, cabbage, celery, horseradish, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cucumber, onion, cabbage, celery, 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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