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Sweet Green Tomato Pickle

A pickle made from green tomatoes, sweetened with sugar and flavored with cinnamon and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Sweet Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Dissolve the salt in cold water.

  2. Slice the green tomatoes and cover them with the saltwater mixture.

  3. Heat the mixture until it scalds, then drain the tomatoes well.

  4. In a cleaned kettle, combine the drained tomatoes with vinegar and water, then scald and drain thoroughly.

Make the syrup

  1. In a separate pot, boil the sugar with vinegar, adding cinnamon and cloves to taste.

Jar and seal

  1. Place the tomatoes in jars and pour the hot pickle over them.

  2. Seal the jars immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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, absorbing the syrup and giving it its main texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the vinegar, creates the pickling syrup that preserves the tomatoes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes, firming them and reducing their moisture before pickling.

The step that matters

Draining the tomatoes after each scalding. Tomatoes left wet dilute the vinegar and sugar syrup, weakening its acidity and sweetness and making the pickle less stable. Draining them thoroughly keeps the syrup strong.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, 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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