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Green Tomato Sauce

A pickled tomato sauce made with green tomatoes, onions, peppers, vinegar, sugar, mustard, spices, and pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, onions, and peppers finely.

  2. Sprinkle the chopped vegetables with coarse sea salt and let them stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the mixture thoroughly.

Cook the sauce

  1. Cook the drained mixture for 15 minutes in vinegar and water.

  2. Drain the mixture again.

  3. Combine the drained mixture with cider vinegar, brown sugar, mustard seed, ground mustard, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger.

  4. Add chopped pickle to the mixture.

  5. Cook for at least 30 minutes.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Vinegar + cidertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, fresh-vegetable body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Yellow mustard seed
Adds pungent flavour and a slight texture to the sauce.
Onions
Add savoury depth and body as they soften during cooking.

The step that matters

Draining after the salt rest. Salting draws water out of the vegetables. Draining them thoroughly removes that liquid so the sauce cooks thick rather than watery and diluted.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, vinegar, cider, sugar, mustard, cinnamon. 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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