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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with onions in a sweet and spicy vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle salt over the sliced tomatoes and onions and let them stand overnight.

  2. Drain the mixture in the morning.

Cook and pack

  1. Mix water and vinegar, then boil the tomatoes and onions in this mixture for 5 minutes.

  2. Drain again.

  3. In a pot, combine 4 quarts of vinegar, brown sugar, ground mustard, ground cloves, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper or chopped green peppers.

  4. Boil for 15 minutes and then pack into jars.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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 slightly when cooked in the brine.
Onions
Add savory body and sweetness that mellows during cooking.
Salt
Draws water out of the sliced vegetables overnight, firming them before pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavor.
Brown sugar
Balances the vinegar with sweetness and adds a molasses depth to the syrup.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that deepens the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Drain the salted vegetables before boiling. Salt draws moisture out overnight; skipping or under-draining leaves excess water that dilutes the vinegar mixture and makes the pickles watery and less tangy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, mustard, clove, cinnamon, pepper. 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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