Skip to main content
Main

Sweet Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato relish with onion, mustard, ginger, allspice, garlic, and brown sugar in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Sweet Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Combine and simmer

  1. Combine all ingredients in an enamel bowl.

  2. Simmer gently until tender, adding more vinegar if too thick.

Rest and bottle

  1. Let it stand until the next day.

  2. Bring to a boil again and then bottle.

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 + allspicetop 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

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and soften into a tender, spoonable texture as they simmer.
Onion
Adds body and sweetness as it cooks down into the mixture.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that balances the sugar and helps keep the pickle loose while it simmers.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour to the pickle.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma that mellows during simmering and resting.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. Gentle heat lets the tomato and onion soften evenly and keeps the brown sugar from scorching on the base of the pan. Vigorous boiling can break the slices apart and thicken the mixture too fast, which is why extra vinegar is added when it gets too thick.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, mustard, ginger, allspice, clove, pepper, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes