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To Pickle Green Tomatoes

A pickled green tomato recipe using vinegar, sugar, spices, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Green Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the tomatoes

  1. Slice the tomatoes into an earthenware dish and sprinkle each layer with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let the tomatoes sit overnight.

Make the pickle

  1. Boil the vinegar and spices together.

  2. Drain the tomatoes and add them with the onions to the strained vinegar.

  3. Simmer until very tender.

Bottle and store

  1. Bottle the mixture and cover it when cold.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 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. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle; salting draws out water so they stay firm while simmering.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the pickle and sharpens the flavour against the sugar.
Brown sugar
Sweetness balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds depth of flavour.
Onions
Add savoury body and soften into the pickle during simmering.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture to the finished pickle.

The step that matters

Simmer until very tender. Simmering must go long enough to soften the tomatoes and let the spices and sugar blend into the vinegar, but not so long that the pieces break down into mush.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, onion, clove, ginger, pepper. 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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