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Green Tomato Soy

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and sprinkle with salt. Let them stand overnight.

  2. Drain the tomatoes well and place them in a large pot.

Cook the pickle

  1. Add vinegar, sugar, chopped onions, mustard mixed with a little water, black pepper, allspice, cloves, cayenne pepper, and mustard seed.

  2. Mix all ingredients together and cook until it reaches a jam-like consistency, stirring to prevent burning. This will take several hours.

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. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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 + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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
Form the bulk of the pickle and break down into a jam-like texture when cooked.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Onions
Add savory body and bulk that thickens as the mixture cooks.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that holds up through long cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking until jam-like. Cooking must be long and gentle with frequent stirring, because the sugar and tomato solids can scorch on the bottom of the pot before the mixture thickens.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  3. Cucumberbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, allspice, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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