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Green Tomato Dolma

A dish of green tomatoes stuffed with a mixture of raw meat, rice, herbs, and spices, then stewed in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and dill match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 382 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Green Tomato Dolma

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Stir the chopped meat and onion in a skillet until slightly browned.

  2. Set the browned mixture aside to cool.

  3. Mix the cooled meat with twice the amount of uncooked rice, pepper, salt, celery, and dill or caraway.

Stuff and stew

  1. Cut the green tomatoes in half.

  2. Remove the seeds and pulp from the halves without breaking the tomatoes.

  3. Fill the tomatoes with the meat mixture.

  4. Replace the tops and secure them with splinters.

  5. Place the stuffed tomatoes in a kettle.

  6. Cover with water.

  7. Stew gently until tender.

  8. Add a little acid during cooking, such as green grapes, lemon juice, or citric acid.

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. Celery + dilltop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together382 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + dilltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,630 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fat raw meat
Provides richness and savoury flavour to the filling as it browns and cooks through.
Uncooked rice
Absorbs juices and meat fat while cooking, giving the filling a tender, moist body.
Fair green tomatoes
Act as the edible shell, softening during gentle stewing while holding the filling together.
Acid (green grapes, lemon juice, or citric acid)
Adds brightness that balances the richness of the meat and keeps the tomatoes' tartness lively.

The step that matters

Stew gently until tender. High heat or a hard boil can break the tomato skins and split the halves, releasing filling. Gentle simmering softens the tomatoes and cooks the rice evenly through the stuffing.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, rice, pepper, celery, dill, tomato):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, rice, pepper, celery, dill, tomato. 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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