Skip to main content
Main

Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato and pepper relish with onions, cloves, cinnamon, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Layer sliced green tomatoes and green peppers in a stone jar, sprinkling each layer thickly with coarse sea salt. Cover with boiling water and let stand overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain through a colander.

Cook the pickle

  1. Add sliced onions, whole cloves, cinnamon, and brown sugar to the drained tomatoes and peppers. Place everything in a preserving kettle and nearly cover with vinegar.

  2. Boil slowly until tender.

Store

  1. Set aside in a jar.

  2. If the syrup seems thin the next day, drain off and boil down. Cover the top of the jar with a cloth before storing.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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 into tender pieces during slow boiling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the syrup as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes and peppers, firming them before cooking.
Onions
Add savory flavor and body to the pickle as they cook down.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until tender. Slow simmering softens the tomatoes gently and lets the syrup reduce evenly; a hard boil can break the pieces apart and scorch the sugar on the kettle bottom.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes