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Green Tomato Sauce

A sauce made from green tomatoes, onions, cabbage, vinegar, mustard, sugar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Layer sliced tomatoes with coarse sea salt in a dish and let stand overnight.

  2. Pour off the liquid from the tomatoes.

  3. Add 2 quarts of water and 1 quart of vinegar to the dish.

  4. Cook for 5 minutes.

  5. Drain the liquid.

Make the sauce

  1. Add chopped onions and cabbage, along with 3 pints of vinegar, mustard, red pepper, and brown sugar.

  2. Add the spice bag.

  3. Cook for 10 to 15 minutes until the cabbage and onions are tender.

  4. Remove the spice bag.

  5. Bottle the sauce.

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. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 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 of the sauce and release liquid when salted, which is then drained off.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Cabbages
Adds body and softens during cooking to thicken the sauce.
Onions
Add savory flavor and soften into the sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Draining the salted tomatoes. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes through osmosis. Pouring off that liquid before adding new water and vinegar keeps the sauce from becoming thin and watery.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, cabbage, vinegar, mustard, pepper, sugar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cabbage, vinegar, mustard, pepper, sugar. 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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