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Sweet Green Tomato Pickles

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Sweet Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Drain the mixture in the morning.

Make the pickles

  1. Boil the tomatoes and onions in 2 quarts of water and 1 quart of vinegar for 5 minutes, then drain through a colander.

  2. Combine 4 quarts of vinegar, brown sugar, ground mustard, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper or green peppers in a pot.

  3. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

Store

  1. Store the pickles in a sealed container; they will keep for a year.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 while cooking in the vinegar brine.
Onions
Add savory body and sweetness that mellows during the long cooking.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickles and gives their sharp tang.
Brown sugar
Balances the vinegar's acidity with sweetness and helps thicken the syrup.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent flavour and a sharp bite to the sweet-sour syrup.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salting. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions. Draining off that liquid and rinsing away excess salt keeps the pickle from tasting harsh and helps it stay firm in the vinegar brine.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, sugar, mustard, clove, ginger, cinnamon. 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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