Skip to main content
Drink

Green Tomato Pickle

A fermented pickle made from green tomatoes, cabbage, cucumbers, peppers, onions, spices, brown sugar, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Combine the ground green tomatoes, cabbage, cucumbers, green peppers, and onions in a large bowl. Sprinkle the mixture with coarse sea salt and mix well.

  2. Place the mixture in a sack and let it drain overnight.

Cook

  1. After draining, add the white mustard seed, celery seed, grated nutmeg, ground cloves, ground cinnamon, and brown sugar.

  2. Pour in enough cider vinegar to cover the mixture and boil for 10 minutes.

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. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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 the tart, fresh base of the relish.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and bulk that holds up through the pickling.
Brown sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness with sweetness and depth of flavour.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables so they drain and stay firmer.

The step that matters

Draining overnight. Salting and draining pulls out excess water from the vegetables. If they are not drained well, the pickle will be watery and dilute the vinegar, so the flavour and texture suffer.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cabbage, cucumber, pepper, onion, mustard, celery):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cabbage, cucumber, pepper, onion, mustard, celery. 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.

More green tomato pickles recipes

Sweet 20 See all 141 →

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesCucumber PicklesCucumber Pickles25 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesApple CiderApple Cider11 recipes