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Green Tomato Pickle

A pickle made from green tomatoes, onions, green peppers, mustard, celery seed, salt, vinegar, and sugar.

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. Chop all ingredients finely.

  2. Layer tomatoes, onions, and peppers in a bowl, sprinkling with salt, using a total of 1-2 cup salt.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Cook and seal

  1. In the morning, squeeze the mixture dry and place it in a pot with 2 quarts of vinegar.

  2. Cook until tender, then add 1 pound of sugar.

  3. Seal in cans.

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 supply its body once cooked until tender.
Onions
Add savory flavour and aroma that deepens during cooking.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and sharpens its flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Squeeze the salted mixture dry. Salt draws water out of the vegetables overnight. Squeezing off that liquid before adding vinegar keeps the pickle from becoming watery and lets it absorb the vinegar and sugar properly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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