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Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato and onion relish made with salt, sugar, mustard, spices, and vinegar.

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

Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Layer sliced green tomatoes and onions in a bowl, sprinkling salt on each layer. Let sit overnight.

  2. Pour off the brine and transfer the vegetables to a kettle.

Cook

  1. Add sugar, mustard, ground cloves, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and curry powder to the kettle.

  2. Cover the mixture with vinegar and let it simmer for one hour.

Jar

  1. Transfer the pickle into stone or glass 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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 provide its tart, firm body.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body that softens during the long simmer.
Sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness and helps the pickle taste rounded.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that deepens as the pickle sits.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Pouring off the brine after overnight salting. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions. Pouring off that liquid removes much of the salt and excess moisture, so the pickle stays firm and less watery once simmered in vinegar.

Swap the onion

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

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

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