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Spanish Pickles

A pickled green tomato and onion relish flavored with sugar, mustard seed, pepper, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, vinegar, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Spanish Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the green tomatoes and onions.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

  3. Strain off the juice.

Make the pickle

  1. Add enough vinegar to cover the pickles and mix in the spices.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes in a muslin bag.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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 soften as they absorb the vinegar and spices.
Onions
Add sharpness and savory body that mellows during the long soak and boil.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness to the pickle.
Vinegar
Preserves the vegetables and provides the main acidic bite.
White mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavor that deepens during boiling.

The step that matters

Salting and draining overnight. Salt draws water out of the chopped tomatoes and onions by osmosis. Draining off that juice before adding vinegar keeps the pickle firmer and stops it from becoming watery and diluted.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, mustard, pepper, clove, ginger, cinnamon. 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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