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Dessert

Green Tomato Mince Meat

A spiced preserve made from green tomatoes, green apples, raisins, suet, citron, citrus peels, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Green Tomato Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, pour boiling water over them, let stand until cool, then drain.

  2. Chop the tart green apples.

Cook and seal

  1. In a large pot, combine the tomatoes, apples, sugar, salt, raisins, suet, citron, lemon peel, and orange peel.

  2. Cook slowly until all ingredients are tender.

  3. Add vinegar, lemon juice, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg.

  4. Seal the mixture in jars.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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 preserve and absorb the sugar and spices as they cook.
Tart green apples
Add pectin and tartness that balance the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it thicken and keep as it cooks down.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving a rounder mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the mixture.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until all ingredients are tender. Slow cooking lets the fruit soften and the sugar and liquid reduce gradually, so the preserve thickens evenly without scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, raisin, lemon, orange, vinegar, clove. 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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