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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with spices, peppers, and onions, preserved in 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 ↓

Green Tomato Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Add salt to the finely chopped tomatoes, cover, and let stand for 24 hours.

Cook

  1. Heat the vinegar to boiling point, then add the spices, tomatoes, peppers, and onions.

  2. Boil all ingredients for 15 minutes.

Store

  1. Store in stone jars in a cool place.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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, after salting, release moisture that the vinegar then replaces.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes over 24 hours, firming them and helping them keep their texture.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp, tangy flavour.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour and crunch to the finished pickle.
Green peppers
Add fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavour and a crisp bite after boiling.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Salting the tomatoes for 24 hours. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes through osmosis. Rinsing or skipping this rest leaves the pickle watery and softer, so the tomatoes should be fully covered and left to stand the full time.

Swap the onion

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

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

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