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Green Tomato Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Green Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the green tomatoes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the black mustard seed, dry mustard, black pepper, allspice, coarse sea salt, celery seed, chopped onions, sugar, and vinegar.

  2. Pulverize the spices and mix them into the tomato mixture.

  3. Boil all ingredients together until well done.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 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
Provide the main body and bulk of the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and green tomatoes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Black mustard seed
Contributes pungent heat and a sharp, mustardy flavour once cooked.
Onions
Add savoury depth and body as they soften during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil until well done. Long boiling softens the chopped tomatoes and onions and mellows the sharp vinegar and raw spice flavours. Stopping too early leaves the sauce harsh and chunky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, mustard, pepper, allspice, celery, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, mustard, pepper, allspice, celery, sugar, 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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