Skip to main content
Main

Greeh Tomato Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made from green tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, spices, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Greeh Tomato Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice green tomatoes.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let stand for 24 hours.

  3. Soak the tomatoes in fresh water.

  4. Scald with weak vinegar.

  5. Wash in fresh water.

Make the pickles

  1. In a pot, combine sugar and vinegar to make a syrup and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the tomatoes to the boiling syrup and scald until clear.

  3. Add whole mace and cinnamon.

  4. Just before removing from heat, add 1 pound of raisins and cook until plumped.

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 absorb the sweet syrup as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, with vinegar, forms the syrup that preserves the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sweetness and helps preserve the pickles.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness as they plump in the syrup.

The step that matters

Scald the tomatoes until clear. Heating the tomatoes in the boiling syrup until they turn translucent shows the syrup has penetrated the flesh. Stopping too early leaves them opaque and less sweet, while overcooking turns them soft and mushy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, sugar, vinegar, syrup, cinnamon, raisin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, vinegar, syrup, cinnamon, raisin. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes