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Green Tomato Chili Sauce

A fermented green tomato and onion sauce with peppers, spices, vinegar, and optional heat, stored in a jar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Green Tomato Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix sliced green tomatoes, sliced white onions, chopped green peppers, and coarse sea salt in an earthen dish, then let sit overnight.

  2. Drain the mixture thoroughly, then chop it into small pieces.

Cook

  1. Pour cider vinegar over the chopped mixture, then add mixed ground spice and brown sugar.

  2. Cook the mixture slowly for 20 minutes, adding the red pepper pod for extra heat.

  3. Taste and add more salt if needed.

Store

  1. Store in a cool place in a tightly covered stone jar.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  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 bulk of the sauce and its tart, fresh-vegetable body.
White onions
Add savory depth and aromatic flavor that mellows during slow cooking.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its sharp tang and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture slowly for 20 minutes. Slow cooking softens the chopped vegetables and lets the vinegar and spices blend evenly. Cooking too hard can scorch the sugar and dry the sauce unevenly, so keep the heat gentle and stir to prevent sticking.

Swap the onion

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

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

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