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Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato and onion mixture flavored with vinegar, sugar, mustard, salt, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and onions.

Cook and season

  1. Boil the tomatoes and onions in 2 quarts of vinegar and 1 quart of water for 3 minutes.

  2. Drain for a few minutes.

  3. Add 2 ½ quarts of fresh vinegar.

  4. Stir in the sugar, ground mustard, coarse sea salt, cinnamon, cloves, and white mustard.

  5. Boil for 3 minutes.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 in the hot vinegar to absorb its flavor.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body that softens during boiling.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
White mustard
Adds pungent flavor that mellows during cooking.

The step that matters

Drain before adding the fresh vinegar. Draining removes the first vinegar and water so the new vinegar sets the final acidity and strength of the brine. Leftover liquid would dilute it and could leave the pickle less tangy and less stable.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, mustard, cinnamon, 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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