Skip to main content
Dessert

Green Tomato Mincemeat

A preserve of green tomatoes, raisins, spices, brown sugar, cider, and vinegar, boiled and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By United Methodist Church (Grayville, Ill.) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 11,917 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Chop a peck of green tomatoes finely and drain for an hour in a colander.

  2. Put the tomatoes into a preserving kettle with five pounds of brown sugar, two cups of boiled cider, and half a cup of vinegar.

  3. Cook until the tomatoes are done and clear.

Add the spices and fruit

  1. Add two pounds of raisins, stoned and halved.

  2. Add two tablespoons of cinnamon, one each of allspice, cloves, and nutmeg. Stir in a dash of salt.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Jar and seal

  1. Pour the boiling mixture into small jars and seal.

  2. In winter, add liquor from sweet pickles or any preserved fruit; chopped apples will improve it.

By United Methodist Church (Grayville, Ill.). 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,027 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,711 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 mincemeat, softening as they cook into a thick filling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps preserve the mixture as it thickens.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the mincemeat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps keep the mixture stable.
Boiled cider
Adds concentrated apple flavor and sweetness with a deeper, tangy character.

The step that matters

Cook until the tomatoes are done and clear. Green tomatoes must be fully softened and translucent before jarring. Undercooked pieces stay firm and can leave the mixture unstable in storage, while overcooking can scorch the sugar.

Flavor stand-ins for the raisin

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

  1. Applebetter flavor fit
  2. Orangebetter flavor fit
  3. Currantabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cider, cinnamon, vinegar, allspice, clove, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Illustration of Cinnamon RollsIllustrationCinnamon Rolls71 recipesIllustration of Clove CakeIllustrationClove Cake53 recipesIllustration of Cinnamon CakeIllustrationCinnamon Cake42 recipesIllustration of White CakeIllustrationWhite Cake431 recipes