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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with onions, mustard seed, spices, and brown sugar in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the green tomatoes and onions.

Cook the pickles

  1. Combine the chopped tomatoes, onions, mustard seed, brown sugar, cinnamon bark, whole cloves, allspice, ground ginger, and red pepper in a large pot.

  2. Add enough vinegar to cover the mixture.

  3. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the vegetables are tender.

Jar

  1. Pack the pickles into sterilized jars and seal.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 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 bulk of the pickle and soften into tender pieces during simmering.
Onions
Add savory body and sweetness that mellows as they cook in the vinegar.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness and helps the syrup thicken slightly.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickles and sharpens their flavor.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, slightly bitter crunch that stands up to long simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer until the vegetables are tender. Green tomatoes are firm and acidic, so they need enough simmering time to soften and absorb the vinegar and spices. Stopping early leaves hard, raw-tasting pieces, and the pickle will not fully take on the flavor of the spices.

Swap the onion

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

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

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