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Green Tomato Sauce

Sauce made from green tomatoes, cabbages, onions, cucumbers, mustard seed, celery seed, cloves, allspice, sugar, vinegar, and salt.

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. Cut the vegetables into small pieces and salt them down overnight in a stone crock.

  2. Pour off the brine and rinse the vegetables in cold fresh water.

Cook and seal

  1. Pour vinegar and sugar over the vegetables.

  2. Add mustard, celery seed, and spices.

  3. Cook until tender.

  4. Seal hot in jars with glass tops and new rubbers.

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 + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

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

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

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 sauce, becoming soft and tender as they cook.
White onions
Add savoury flavour and body to the sauce as they soften.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Cucumbers
Add moisture and fresh bulk that softens into the sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook until tender. Cooking long enough softens the vegetables fully and lets the vinegar, sugar and spices blend. Stopping early leaves the sauce raw-tasting and less stable in the jar.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, mustard, cabbage, sugar, onion, celery, cucumber):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, mustard, cabbage, sugar, onion, celery, cucumber. 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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