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Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato and onion relish seasoned with salt, sugar, mustard, spices, and vinegar.

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 ↓

Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and onions thinly.

  2. Layer the tomatoes and onions in a bowl, sprinkling salt on each layer.

  3. Let the mixture sit overnight.

  4. Drain the brine.

Cook and jar

  1. Transfer the vegetables to a kettle.

  2. Add sugar, mustard, ground cloves, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and curry powder.

  3. Cover the mixture with vinegar.

  4. Simmer for 1 hour.

  5. Transfer to stone or 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. Clove + cinnamontop 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 soften into a chunky, tender texture as they simmer.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body that softens during the long simmer.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that complements the spices.

The step that matters

Draining the brine after the overnight salting. Salt draws water out of the sliced tomatoes and onions. Draining that liquid before cooking keeps the pickle from becoming watery and lets the vinegar and sugar set the final texture and balance.

Swap the onion

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

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

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