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Dessert

Tomato Mincemeat

A sweet preserve made from green tomatoes, sugar, raisins, mace, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Tomato Mincemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice green tomatoes and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Place tomatoes in a bag and hang to drip overnight.

  3. In the morning, measure equal weights of sugar and tomatoes and cook until tomatoes are soft.

Make the mincemeat

  1. For every 7 pounds of the tomato-sugar mixture, add 3 pounds of seedless raisins and season with mace and cinnamon to taste.

  2. Cook for a short time after adding the seasonings and transfer to jars.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 mincemeat and a tart, fruity base once cooked down.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps draw out moisture and thicken it as it cooks.
Seedless raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness that suits the mincemeat style.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the sliced tomatoes so they drain and cook more firmly.

The step that matters

Cooking until the tomatoes are soft. Tomatoes must be fully softened before the raisins and spices go in, because undercooked pieces stay firm and watery. Cooking with sugar also thickens the mixture as moisture evaporates, so it should be checked for consistency before jarring.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raisin, mace, cinnamon):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, mace, 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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