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Green Tomato Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes with peppers, onions, mustard seed, sugar, cloves, and cinnamon bark.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine green tomatoes, green peppers, onions, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  3. In the morning, drain the mixture thoroughly.

Cook and pickle

  1. Boil the drained mixture in 2 quarts of water and 1 cup of vinegar for about 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the mixture again.

  3. Cook the drained mixture in a mixture of 2 quarts vinegar, mustard seed, sugar, cloves, and cinnamon bark tied in cheesecloth.

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. Pepper + clovetop 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
Provide the main body and bulk of the pickle, softening during cooking while holding their shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, slightly bitter flavor and aroma as it infuses into the cooking liquid.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the vegetables so they drain and firm up before cooking.

The step that matters

Draining the salted mixture overnight and again after boiling. Salting draws water out of the vegetables; draining thoroughly removes that liquid so the pickle does not turn watery and the vinegar brine can take hold.

Swap the onion

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

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

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