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Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato dish flavored with onions, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Thoroughly wash the tomatoes and cut them into ¼ inch slices.

  2. Peel the onions and slice them very thin.

  3. Sprinkle alternate layers of tomatoes and onions with salt.

  4. Cover the layered tomatoes and onions with a weighted plate.

  5. Let the covered mixture stand overnight.

  6. Drain the mixture.

Make the spice bags

  1. Mix the spices together.

  2. Divide the mixed spices into two parts.

  3. Tie each part in small pieces of cheesecloth.

  4. Remove seeds from the peppers.

  5. Cut the peppers into thin strips.

Cook and pickle

  1. Heat the vinegar and brown sugar with the spices and peppers to boiling point.

  2. Add the tomatoes and onions to the boiling mixture.

  3. Cook slowly for about 1 hour or until the tomatoes are clear.

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. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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 main body of the pickle and soften into a tender, translucent texture during long cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the layered tomatoes and onions, firming them and helping them keep their shape.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness and helps build a thick, rich syrup.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Onions
Add savory flavor and soften into the syrup, adding body to the pickle.
Whole spices (cloves, allspice, cinnamon, ginger)
Infuse the hot syrup with warm, aromatic flavor while the spice bags keep the pickle clean.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salting. Salt draws out a large amount of water from the tomatoes and onions. Draining and not rinsing them thoroughly leaves excess salt that can make the pickle overly salty, while the salting itself is what firms the vegetables so they hold their shape in the hot syrup.

Swap the onion

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

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

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