Name: Pickled Green Tomatoes
Ingredients: green tomatoes; coarse sea salt; water; sugar; mustard; ground cloves; cinnamon; cayenne pepper; curry powder

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 ↓

Pickled Green Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Slice green tomatoes and layer them in a stone crock, adding coarse sea salt between layers until nearly full.
Let the crock stand overnight.
In the morning, drain the tomatoes and pour clear water over them.
Prepare syrup as for pickled peaches and heat the tomatoes in the syrup just until warmed through.
Remove the tomatoes and fill jars three-fourths full.
Boil the syrup for 30 minutes, then pour it over the tomatoes and cover.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,581 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,829 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the tomato

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

Horseradishfits better
Capsicumfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, mustard, clove, cinnamon, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.