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Green Tomato Sauce

A sauce made from finely chopped tomatoes and onions, seasoned with cinnamon, mustard, allspice, cayenne pepper, salt, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Chop the tomatoes and onions very fine.

  2. Mix the other ingredients in a pot and heat them.

  3. Add the chopped vegetables and cook for 1.5 hours, or until very tender.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the sauce and store it like chili 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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and break down into a thick, pulpy body as they cook.
Onions
Add savory depth and soften into the sauce as it simmers for a long time.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Cooking until very tender. The long simmer must fully soften the finely chopped vegetables and reduce the liquid. Stopping early leaves a thin, watery sauce with a raw vegetable texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cinnamon, sugar, mustard, vinegar, allspice, pepper. 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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