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Mustard Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes and onions with mustard, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle sliced tomatoes and onions with salt and let stand overnight.

  2. Drain the tomatoes and onions.

Make the pickle

  1. Pour water and vinegar over them and heat well.

  2. Drain again.

  3. Mix mustard with a little vinegar to form a paste.

  4. Combine heated tomatoes and onions with sugar, vinegar, mustard paste, cinnamon, cloves, and cayenne pepper, then heat for about 20 minutes.

Jar

  1. Can in glass jars.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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
Form the bulk of the pickle and absorb the brine and spices as the main vegetable.
Onions
Add savory flavor and body that softens during the salting and heating.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness and helps preserve the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavor and a sharp, mustardy bite to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Salting overnight and draining. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions through osmosis, firming them and removing excess liquid. Draining thoroughly before heating keeps the final pickle from being watery and diluted.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, mustard, cinnamon, clove, 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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