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Spiced Green Tomato Pickle

A pickled green tomato preserve flavored with cloves, pepper, allspice, mustard, cinnamon, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Spiced Green Tomato Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Dissolve 1 cup of coarse sea salt in 1 quart of water.

  2. Cover the sliced green tomatoes with the saltwater and let it stand for 2 hours.

  3. Drain the tomatoes through a colander, pressing them to remove excess liquid.

Cook the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine the drained tomatoes, 1 quart of vinegar, ground cloves, pepper, allspice, mustard, cinnamon, and brown sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes, then simmer for about 1 hour.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Clove + peppertop 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 (in the method)
Provide the bulk of the pickle and soften as they cook in the spiced vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the sliced tomatoes, firming them before the pickling liquid is added.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavor.
Brown sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness with sweetness and adds depth to the syrupy liquid.

The step that matters

Draining the salted tomatoes. Pressing out excess liquid removes water that would otherwise dilute the vinegar mixture, helping the pickle thicken and keep its flavor.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Horseradishfits less well
  4. Carrotfits less well

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