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Green Tomato Soy

A pickled green tomato relish with onions, spices, mustard, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and drain

  1. Sprinkle salt through the chopped tomatoes and let sit for 24 hours.

  2. Drain the liquid from the tomatoes.

Cook

  1. Cover the tomatoes and onions with cider vinegar.

  2. Simmer until transparent.

  3. When nearly done, add the white mustard seed.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and give it its main texture.
Onions
Add savory aroma and soften into a tender, mellow body as they simmer.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps keep it preserved.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that comes through when it is added near the end.

The step that matters

Simmer until transparent. Simmering softens the tomatoes and onions so they become tender and absorb the vinegar and spices. Stopping too early leaves the vegetables firm and raw-tasting, while cooking too long can turn them mushy.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, allspice, pepper, ginger, mustard, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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