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Sweet Pickled Green Tomatoes

A preserved sweet pickled green tomato and pepper mixture with onions, spices, sugar, and vinegar.

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 Pickled Green Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Layer sliced green tomatoes and green peppers in a stone jar, sprinkling each layer thickly with coarse sea salt. Cover with boiling water and let sit overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain well through a colander.

Make the pickle

  1. Add sliced onions, cinnamon, cloves, and brown sugar to the drained tomatoes and peppers.

  2. Place the mixture in a preserving kettle and nearly cover with vinegar.

  3. Boil slowly until tender. The syrup should be like thin cream when cold.

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

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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 bulk of the pickle and soften into tender pieces during slow boiling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the syrup as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them before pickling.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and spice flavour to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds warm aroma and spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until tender. Slow simmering lets the vinegar and sugar soak into the vegetables and reduce the syrup gradually. Boiling too hard can break the pieces apart and scorch the sugar on the bottom of the kettle.

Swap the onion

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

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

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