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Sauce

Green-tomato Sauce

A fermented green tomato and onion sauce seasoned with spices, vinegar, brandy, and sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green-tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and onions, layering them in dishes and sprinkling each layer with coarse sea salt. Set aside for 24 hours.

  2. Drain through a sieve until perfectly dry.

Cook the sauce

  1. Put the tomatoes and onions in a kettle and cover with strong vinegar. Simmer gently until quite tender, but do not boil.

  2. Add the white mustard seed, sliced red pepper, allspice, mace, cloves, black pepper, celery seed, and sugar.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the brandy and sweet oil.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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
Form the bulk of the sauce and become tender during the long simmer.
Onions
Add sweetness and body as they soften into the sauce.
Strong vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the sauce and sharpens its flavour.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that mellows during cooking.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth, stirred in off the heat so its alcohol stays more intact.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until quite tender, but do not boil. Boiling breaks the tomatoes and onions down unevenly and can make the sauce bitter or scorched, while gentle simmering softens them evenly and lets flavours blend.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, vinegar, mustard, pepper, allspice, clove. 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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