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Green Tomato Sauce

A sauce made from green tomatoes, onions, mustard, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle sliced green tomatoes with coarse sea salt and press with a plate. Let drain for 24 hours.

Layer and cook

  1. In a porcelain kettle, layer the drained tomatoes with sliced onions and the remaining ingredients.

  2. Cover with vinegar and simmer for 2 hours, or until the tomatoes look clear. Ensure all spices are ground.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 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. 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
Form the bulk of the sauce and soften into a tart, thick body as they simmer.
Onions
Break down during simmering to add sweetness and body to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sauce and gives it its tang.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent bite to the sauce.
Black pepper
Adds a warm, sharp heat that carries through the long simmer.

The step that matters

Drain the salted tomatoes fully. Salt draws water out of the sliced tomatoes through osmosis. If they are not drained well for the full 24 hours, the excess water dilutes the sauce and it will simmer thin rather than thick.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, mustard, clove, pepper, ginger, allspice, 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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