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Pickled Green Tomatoes

A pickled green tomato dish preserved with salt, sugar, spices, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Pickled Green Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the tomatoes and mix them with the salt.

  2. Let them sit overnight.

  3. Drain off the water and discard it.

Make the pickle

  1. Combine all the ingredients in a pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Store the mixture for later use.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Make up the bulk of the pickle and absorb the flavors of the brine and spices.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes, firming their texture and helping preserve them.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the saltiness of the pickle.
Cloves
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickle.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickle.
Cinnamon
Contributes sweet, woody aroma to the pickle.

The step that matters

Draining the salted tomatoes. Salt pulls water out of the sliced tomatoes overnight. Draining off that liquid and discarding it removes the excess water, so the pickle stays firm and is not diluted when the brine is added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, sugar, clove, allspice, 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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