Name: Green Tomato Sauce
Ingredients: 8 pounds green tomatoes; 3 pounds brown sugar; 1 quart vinegar; 1 teaspoon cloves; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; 1 teaspoon ginger; 1 teaspoon nutmeg

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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

Cut the green tomatoes and boil them in water to cover for 2 hours.
Drain the tomatoes through a colander.

Make the sauce

Add brown sugar, vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg to the tomatoes.
Boil the mixture for 1 hour.
Bottle the sauce.

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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 sauce and its tart, fruity base flavor.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and helps thicken the sauce as it cooks down.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

Sweet potatofits better
Shallotfits better
Mustardfits better
Tomatothe original

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