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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes, peppers, and onions in a vinegar and spice brine.

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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and drain

  1. Sprinkle the sliced tomatoes, peppers, and onions with salt and let them stand for 12 hours.

  2. Drain off all the water.

Make the pickles

  1. Bring the vinegar to a boil in a pot.

  2. Add the sugar and spices to the boiling vinegar.

  3. Add the tomatoes and peppers to the boiling mixture and boil for 5 minutes.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the pickles in wide-mouth bottles.

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. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 provide firm, tart pieces that hold their shape.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the pickles their tang and helps preserve them.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Ground horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that stands out in the sweet-sour liquid.
Green peppers
Add crisp texture and a fresh, vegetal flavor to the mix.

The step that matters

Drain off all the water. Water released by the salted vegetables would dilute the hot vinegar brine, weakening its acidity and making the pickles softer and less well preserved.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, vinegar, horseradish, sugar, allspice, clove. 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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