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Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato dish seasoned with mustard seed, cloves, pepper, ginger, allspice, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the tomatoes

  1. Layer sliced tomatoes in a bowl, sprinkling each layer with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let the salted tomatoes stand for 24 hours.

Make and simmer the pickle

  1. In a bowl, mix together onions, mustard seed, cloves, ground pepper, ground ginger, and allspice.

  2. In a kettle, layer the salted tomatoes and the mixed spices.

  3. Cover with vinegar and simmer until the tomatoes look clear.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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; salting draws out moisture so the slices stay firmer.
Onions
Add sweetness and body as they soften during simmering.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour to the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer until the tomatoes look clear. Gentle heat softens the tomato cell walls so the slices become translucent and absorb the vinegar and spices. Simmering too long breaks the slices down into mush, while stopping too early leaves them firm and raw-tasting.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, mustard, clove, pepper, ginger, allspice, 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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