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Dessert

Green Tomato Mincemeat

A sweet and spiced green tomato mincemeat with raisins, citron, suet, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Mincemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Chop the green tomatoes finely and drain off the juice.

  2. Cover the tomatoes with cold water and boil for 30 minutes, then drain.

  3. Par-boil the tomatoes three times.

Make the mincemeat

  1. Add brown sugar, raisins, citron, suet, salt, and vinegar to the tomatoes.

  2. Mix and cook until thick.

  3. When cold, add cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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 mincemeat and give it a tart, moist body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it cooks, helps thicken and deepen the mixture.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Suet
Adds fat, giving richness and a softer mouthfeel to the mincemeat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Cook until thick. Cooking drives off moisture and lets the sugar and tomato pectin set the mixture. Stopping too early leaves it runny, and cooking too long can scorch the sugars on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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