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Dessert

Green Tomato Preserves

Preserved green tomatoes in a sweet vinegar sauce with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, boil the vinegar and sugar for 45 minutes.

  2. Add the sliced green tomatoes and continue boiling until thick like preserves.

  3. Stir in whole cloves, ground cloves, cinnamon, mace, and celery seed to taste.

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

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

  3. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cinnamon + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the preserve, softening as they cook down into a thick mass.
White sugar
Sweetens the preserves and, as it thickens with boiling, helps give them a syrupy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and gives the preserves a sharp, tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling until thick like preserves. Sugar and tomato pectin set only as water evaporates and the mixture concentrates. Stopping too early leaves a runny preserve, while boiling too long can scorch the sugar and darken the flavor.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, 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.

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