Skip to main content
Main

Green Tomatoes

A boiled green tomato dish flavored with onions, mustard, spices, brown sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle sliced green tomatoes with salt and let them stand overnight.

  2. Layer the tomatoes and sliced onions in a pot.

Cook

  1. Add ground mustard, black pepper, white mustard seed, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, coarse sea salt, allspice, brown sugar, and ground ginger.

  2. Cover with vinegar and boil for two hours.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked 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 stew and soften into a tender, saucy texture as they cook.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften during the long simmer.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and spices.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the stew.
White mustard seed
Adds a pungent, slightly bitter bite that deepens with long cooking.

The step that matters

Boil for two hours. Long boiling softens the tomatoes and onions and lets the vinegar and spices blend. Too short a boil leaves the vegetables firm and the flavors sharp and separate.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes