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Quickly Made Tomato Pickle

A quick pickle of green tomatoes, onions, peppers, and spices in cider 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 ↓

Quickly Made Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and onions.

  2. Chop the green peppers.

  3. Mix the ground mustard with a little water.

Combine and pickle

  1. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl.

  2. Pour the spiced vinegar over the mixture.

  3. Let it sit before serving.

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. Cinnamon + turmerictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Clove + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 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 give it its firm, tart body.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and bulk that soften slightly as they sit in the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the mixture and gives it its sharp flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and rounds out the spiced flavor.
Mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, slightly bitter bite and aroma when steeped.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, cinnamon, mustard, clove, turmeric, 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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