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Dessert

Green Tomato Mincemeat

A fruit preserve made from green tomatoes, apples, sugar, vinegar, suet, spices, raisins, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Mincemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Chop the green tomatoes finely, then squeeze and drain off the juice.

  2. Cover the tomatoes with hot water and add 2 tablespoons of salt. Boil for a few minutes, then drain.

  3. Repeat this process three times.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the chopped apples, sugar, vinegar, suet, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, raisins, and currants.

  2. Boil until the apples are tender.

  3. Can the mixture in fruit jars and seal tightly.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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 mincemeat and, once salted and drained, give it a moist, tender base.
Yellow sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the mixture while it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the mixture stable.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the texture and carries the spices.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.
Apples
Add body, moisture and tartness as they soften during boiling.

The step that matters

Draining the salted tomatoes. Salting and draining pull water out of the chopped tomatoes. If they are not drained well, the mincemeat stays watery and may not thicken or keep properly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, raisin):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, raisin. 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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