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Dessert

Green Tomato Mince Meat

A sweet and spiced mixture of green tomatoes, apples, raisins, sugar, vinegar, and spices used as pie filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour 1 quart of cold water over the chopped tomatoes and boil for 2 hours.

  2. Add the apples, raisins, brown sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Cook until done, about 30 minutes.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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 mincemeat and cook down to a soft, moist base.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the mixture while giving it a rich, dark color.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness as they soften in the cooking liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Apples
Contribute body and tartness as they break down into the filling.

The step that matters

Cook until done. Simmering long enough lets the tomato and apple pieces soften and the liquid reduce into a thick filling. Stopping too early leaves it watery, while cooking too long can scorch the sugar and make it sticky.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, raisin, sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, allspice):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, raisin, sugar, 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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