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Sauce

Green Tomato Sauce

A pickled green tomato sauce made with vinegar, salt, spices, and green tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Tie the ground spices in a muslin bag.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a porcelain-lined kettle.

Cook and seal

  1. Boil until the tomatoes are quite tender.

  2. Transfer to air-tight jars and seal closely.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 break down into body as they cook.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the spices and helps preserve the sauce.
Ground mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour to the sauce.
Ground red pepper
Adds heat to the sauce.
Ground cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Ground cinnamon
Adds sweet, warm aroma and depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Boil until the tomatoes are quite tender. Tomatoes that are only partly cooked stay firm and hold their shape, while fully tender tomatoes break down and thicken the sauce evenly. Stopping early leaves the texture uneven.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, clove, cinnamon, 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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