Name: Sweet Green Tomato Pickles
Ingredients: 1 peck green tomatoes, sliced; 2 quarts small white onions, sliced; 1 large cup coarse sea salt; Vinegar, enough to cover; 2 pounds brown sugar; ¼ pound mustard seed; 2 tablespoons allspice; 2 tablespoons whole cloves; 2 tablespoons stick cinnamon

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 ↓

Sweet Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

Sprinkle the sliced tomatoes and onions with salt and let them sit overnight in the brine.
In the morning, drain the vegetables and soak them in cold water for a few minutes.
Pour off the water and add enough vinegar to cover the vegetables.

Make the pickles

Stir in the brown sugar, mustard seed, allspice, whole cloves, and cinnamon stick.
Cook the mixture until the pickles are tender.
Transfer the pickles into jars and seal them.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,928 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
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 bulk of the pickle and soften as they cook in the sweet vinegar.
White onions: Add savory flavor and pieces that soften and absorb the spiced vinegar.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar: Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Mustard seed: Contributes a sharp, pungent flavor to the spiced syrup.

The step that matters

Drain and rinse after the overnight salting. Salt draws water out of the vegetables. Draining and briefly soaking them in cold water removes excess salt, so the finished pickles are not overly salty, and the vinegar can then be added without diluting the brine too early.

Swap the onion

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

Horseradishfits better
Capsicumfits better
Cucumberfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, mustard, allspice, clove, 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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Sweet Green Tomato Pickles