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Sauce

Green Tomato Sauce

A sauce made from green tomatoes, mustard, spices, onions, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Green Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut up the green tomatoes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, combine black mustard seed, dry mustard, black pepper, allspice, coarse sea salt, celery seed, chopped onions, sugar, and vinegar.

  2. Heat the mixture and boil for 4 minutes.

  3. Transfer to a cooker kettle, clamp the cover, and let it sit for 4 to 5 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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 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 main body and tart flavour of the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity and preserves the sauce while it sits.
Black mustard seed
Supplies pungent heat and body as the seeds soften in the liquid.
Chopped onions
Add savoury depth and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Transfer to a cooker kettle, clamp the cover, and let it sit for 4 to 5 hours. Sealing the hot sauce and holding it for several hours lets the mustard seed, onion and vinegar flavours blend and mellow. Leaving the cover off or rushing this rest can leave the sauce sharp and less developed.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, mustard, pepper, allspice, celery, sugar, 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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