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Dessert

Green Tomato Mincemeat

A sweet preserve made from green tomatoes, apples, suet, spices, and dried fruit.

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.

  2. Squeeze and drain off the juice.

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

  4. 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 done. Add more sugar if preferred.

  3. Can 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
Provide the bulk of the mincemeat and a tart, firm body once salted and drained.
Apples
Add pectin-rich body and soft texture as they cook down into the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the mixture while it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the filling.
Suet
Adds fat that gives richness and a moist, rounded mouthfeel.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Salting, rinsing and draining the tomatoes. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes by osmosis, and repeated draining removes that liquid. Skipping or shortening this leaves excess moisture that can make the mincemeat watery and less stable in the jars.

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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