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Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato and pepper relish made with vinegar, sugar, cloves, mustard seed, celery seed, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice green tomatoes and peppers, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and let stand overnight.

Make the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, whole cloves, mustard seed, and celery seed; boil well.

  2. Squeeze tomatoes to remove excess salt water, then add them to the boiling vinegar mixture.

  3. Boil for 1 hour, then bottle the mixture while hot.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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 as they cook in the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness with sweetness.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes and peppers, firming them before pickling.

The step that matters

Squeeze tomatoes to remove excess salt water. Salt draws moisture out of the tomatoes. If too much brine stays with them, it dilutes the vinegar mixture and weakens its acidity, which can reduce how well the pickle keeps.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, sugar, clove, mustard, celery. 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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