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Sauce

Greex Tomato Sauce

A sauce made from green tomatoes, onions, mustard, spices, and vinegar, simmered for two hours.

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 ↓

Greex Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Sprinkle sliced green tomatoes with coarse sea salt and press with a plate.

  2. Let 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.

  2. Cover the mixture with vinegar and simmer for 2 hours, or until the tomatoes look clear. Ensure all spices are ground.

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
Form the bulk of the sauce; salting and draining removes water so the sauce thickens.
Onions
Add sweetness and body as they soften during the long simmer.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavor that mellows during simmering.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the sauce and brightens its flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer until the tomatoes look clear. Simmering long enough softens the tomato and lets the vinegar and spices blend into the sauce. Stopping early leaves the tomato firm and the flavors sharp and disjointed.

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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