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Geeen Tomato Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 7,874 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Geeen Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Sprinkle sliced green tomatoes with coarse sea salt, then press the tomatoes with a plate.

  2. Leave the tomatoes to drain for 24 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. In a porcelain kettle, layer the drained tomatoes with sliced onions, mustard, mustard seed, cloves, black pepper, ginger, and allspice. Ensure all spices are ground.

  2. Cover the mixture with vinegar.

  3. Simmer for 2 hours, or until the tomatoes look clear.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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, once salted and drained, a firm texture that holds up to long simmering.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the sliced tomatoes, firming them and concentrating their flavour.
Onions
Add sweetness and body that soften into the sauce during simmering.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the finished sauce.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that mellows during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Simmer until the tomatoes look clear. Simmering long enough softens the tomato slices and lets the spices and vinegar blend into the sauce. Stopping early leaves the texture firm and the flavour harsh and unintegrated.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  3. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, mustard, clove, pepper, ginger, allspice, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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