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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with onions, horseradish, peppers, and spices in a vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onions, horseradish, and green peppers.

  2. Put them in a sieve and drain well.

  3. Layer with coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

  4. Drain again the next day.

Pickle and season

  1. Scald the vinegar and pour it over the mixture.

  2. Let it stand for 2 to 3 days, then drain again.

  3. Boil the sugar with the scalded vinegar, black pepper, allspice, ground cloves, mustard, and mustard seed in a little vinegar.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 provide the firm, tart base.
Onions
Add pungent flavour that mellows during the long pickling period.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and concentrating flavour.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavour that deepens as the pickle stands.

The step that matters

Drain the salted vegetables thoroughly. Salt draws out water through osmosis. If the vegetables are not drained well after salting and again after standing, excess liquid dilutes the vinegar brine and leaves the pickle soft and watery rather than crisp.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, horseradish, pepper, vinegar, sugar, allspice, clove. 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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