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Sauce

Green Tomato Chili Sauce

A fermented green tomato sauce with onions, vinegar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind the green tomatoes and onions finely.

  2. Mix 1 quart of water with 1 cup of coarse sea salt and pour over the ground mixture.

  3. Let it stand overnight.

  4. In the morning, drain the mixture.

Cook the sauce

  1. Add 2 quarts of vinegar and 1 quart of water to the drained mixture.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes, then drain again.

  3. Add 1 quart of water and 1 quart of vinegar.

  4. Stir in the spices and boil for 30 minutes.

  5. Seal the sauce while hot.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 and tart base of the sauce.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and body as they cook down with the tomatoes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the sauce and sharpens its flavour.
Allspice
Contributes warm aroma that flavours the sauce during the long boil.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salt soak. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables, so draining well removes excess liquid. Leftover moisture would thin the sauce and dilute its flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, allspice, ginger, vinegar, cinnamon, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, allspice, ginger, vinegar, cinnamon, pepper. 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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