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Green Tomato Pickles

A pickled green tomato relish with spices, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

  1. Scald the sliced tomatoes in salt and water until slightly tender.

  2. Chop the onions and green peppers finely.

Make the pickles

  1. In a large bowl, mix the tomatoes, chopped onions, chopped peppers, ground pepper, mace, cloves, mustard, cinnamon, mustard seed, celery seed, nasturtiums, and sugar.

  2. Cover the mixture with vinegar and simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Add more tomatoes if you prefer a less spicy flavor.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 its firm, tart body.
Onions
Add savory flavor and bulk, softening as the pickle cooks.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and spices with sweetness.
Vinegar
Supplies the sharp acidity that defines the pickle's tang.
White mustard seed
Adds a pungent, sharp flavor that carries through the pickle.

The step that matters

Scald the tomatoes until only slightly tender. Scalding softens the tomato walls, but overcooking breaks them down into mush. Stopping at slight tenderness keeps the slices intact through the later simmer, so they stay firm in the finished pickle.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, clove, mustard, cinnamon, celery, onion. 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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