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Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato and onion mixture seasoned with ginger, mustard, allspice, cloves, cayenne, black pepper, celery seed, turmeric, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle sliced green tomatoes and onions with salt and let them stand for 24 hours.

  2. Strain off the brine.

Make the pickles

  1. In a bowl, mix ginger root, black mustard seed, white mustard seed, allspice, bruised cloves, cayenne pepper, black pepper, celery seed, turmeric, and sugar.

  2. Layer the tomatoes and onions in a kettle, sprinkling the spice mixture and sugar between each layer.

  3. Fill the kettle with good cider vinegar.

  4. Simmer on the stove until the mixture looks clear.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and absorb the vinegar and spice flavors as they simmer.
Onions
Add sweetness and body that softens and blends into the pickle during simmering.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and helps create a sweet-sour flavor.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tangy flavor.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer until the mixture looks clear. Simmering softens the vegetables and lets the vinegar, sugar and spices blend together. Stopping too early leaves the pickle sharp and underdeveloped, while overcooking turns the tomatoes and onions mushy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, ginger, mustard, allspice, clove, pepper, 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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