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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 the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle salt over sliced tomatoes and onions; let stand overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the mixture.

Cook and pickle

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

  2. In a pot, combine 4 quarts of vinegar, brown sugar, ground mustard, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper; boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Store 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 during the brief boil.
Onions
Add savory flavor and body that blends into the sweet-sour brine.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and gives the pickles their sharp tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Ground mustard
Contributes pungent flavor to the spiced brine.

The step that matters

Salting overnight and draining. Salting draws water out of the tomatoes and onions through osmosis, so they stay firmer and the brine is not diluted. Draining well before cooking removes excess salt and liquid, which helps the pickles keep their texture and balanced flavor.

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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