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Sliced Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato and onion relish made with vinegar, sugar, cloves, allspice, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Sliced Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and onions.

  2. Sprinkle a little coarse sea salt on each layer of tomatoes and onions.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  4. In the morning, drain well through a colander.

Cook the pickle

  1. Combine vinegar, sugar, cloves, allspice, and pepper in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add the tomatoes and cook for 10 to 15 minutes until ready for use.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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
Provide the bulk of the pickle, becoming tender and absorbing the spiced vinegar syrup.
Onions
Add savory flavour and body that softens during cooking.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and helps preserve the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salt rest. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions overnight. Draining them well removes that liquid so the pickle does not become watery and the vinegar syrup stays properly concentrated.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, pepper. 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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