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Green Tomato Soy

A tangy green tomato sauce with onions, mangoes, sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Green Tomato Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, onions, and mangoes.

  2. Save some vinegar to mix the spices in.

Cook

  1. In a large pot, combine the chopped tomatoes, onions, mangoes, sugar, vinegar, cayenne pepper, ground cloves, mustard, celery seed, and allspice.

  2. Stir the mixture to prevent scorching and cook until tender.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Tomato + mangotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Mango + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together471 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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 main body and bulk of the sauce as they cook down.
Onions
Add savory flavor and body as they soften during cooking.
Mangoes
Add fruity sweetness and soft texture as they break down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture to prevent scorching and cook until tender. The sauce is thick and sugary, so sugars can settle on the bottom of the pot and burn. Frequent stirring keeps heat even and the mixture from sticking while the vegetables soften.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, mango, sugar, vinegar, pepper, clove, mustard. 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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