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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with spices, peppers, onions, brown sugar, and vinegar.

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 ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice 1 peck of green tomatoes and layer them in a jar, sprinkling a little coarse sea salt over each layer.

  2. Let the tomatoes stand for 24 hours, then drain off the liquid.

Cook

  1. In a kettle, combine the tomatoes with the spices, horseradish, peppers, onions, and brown sugar.

  2. Cover the mixture with vinegar and boil slowly for 3 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 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
Provide the main body of the pickle, softening into tender pieces during long simmering.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes during standing, firming their texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.
Onions
Add savory depth and body as they soften in the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 3 hours. A slow simmer lets the tomatoes soften and absorb the vinegar and spices gradually. Boiling too hard can break the pieces apart and make the texture mushy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, ginger, allspice, clove, cinnamon, horseradish, 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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