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Salad

Green Tomato Relish

A pickled relish of cabbage, peppers, tomatoes, onions, celery, vinegar, sugar, spices, and mustard seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Green Tomato Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the cabbage, green peppers, green tomatoes, red pepper, ripe tomatoes, onions, and celery using a food chopper.

  2. Mix the chopped vegetables with ½ cup coarse sea salt and let them stand overnight.

  3. Drain the vegetables.

Cook and seal

  1. In a pot, combine 3 pints of vinegar, 2½ lbs of white sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, ½ teaspoon of cloves, and ½ cup of mustard seed.

  2. Add the drained vegetables to the pot and cook for 1 hour.

  3. Seal the relish in hot jars.

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. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,009 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the main bulk and tart flavor of the relish.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the relish along with the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the relish.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and bulk that holds up during cooking.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma as they cook down.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, tomato, celery, vinegar, sugar, 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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