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Green Tomato Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made by boiling green tomatoes in vinegar and sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pare the green tomatoes.

Cook the tomatoes and syrup

  1. Boil the tomatoes in hot vinegar and water for 30 minutes.

  2. Make a syrup with strong vinegar and brown sugar, boiling for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the tomatoes from the vinegar and water, then add them to the syrup.

  4. Boil the tomatoes in the syrup for 45 minutes.

Jar and seal

  1. Transfer to preserve jars, cover with syrup, and seal when cool.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,887 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the firm fruit that holds its shape through long simmering in syrup.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep molasses flavor, and helps thicken the syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Boiling the tomatoes in the syrup for 45 minutes. Boiling too hard can break the tomatoes apart, while too gentle a simmer leaves them undercooked and the syrup thin. Keeping a steady simmer lets the fruit become tender and absorb the sugar while staying whole.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

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