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Qreen Tomato Soy

A thickened green tomato sauce made by pickling tomatoes with salt, onions, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,928 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Qreen Tomato Soy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the green tomatoes thinly and mix with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

  3. Strain the tomatoes and place them in a pot with the onions, black pepper, allspice, ground mustard, white mustard seed, and cayenne pepper.

Cook the sauce

  1. Cover the mixture with vinegar and boil until thickened like jam, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon to prevent burning.

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. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 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, breaking down into a thick, jam-like body when boiled.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the sliced tomatoes, firming them and concentrating their flavor before cooking.
Raw onions
Add savory sweetness and body that softens and thickens as the sauce cooks.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that mellows during long simmering.

The step that matters

Boiling until thickened. Stirring with a wooden spoon helps prevent the sugars and solids from scorching on the bottom of the pot, which would give a burnt taste. Boiling down slowly lets the water evaporate so the sauce thickens to a jam-like consistency.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, allspice, mustard, vinegar. 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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