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Green Tomato Catsup

A preserved green tomato condiment made with sugar, vinegar, spices, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Green Tomato Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice green tomatoes and sprinkle a little coarse sea salt over them.

  2. Boil the tomatoes for twenty minutes in a mixture of vinegar and water with 1 pound of sugar.

  3. Remove the tomatoes and layer them in a jar with pepper, mustard, horseradish, onions, and spices.

Pack the jar

  1. Pour strong vinegar over the layers to cover them.

  2. Repeat layering until the jar is full.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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
Form the bulk of the ketchup and supply its tart, fresh body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and tomato acidity.
Strong vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the ketchup and sharpens its flavour.
Onions
Contribute savoury depth and aroma to the layered mixture.
Mustard
Adds pungency and a sharp, aromatic bite.

The step that matters

Boil the tomatoes in vinegar and sugar. Boiling softens the tomato and lets the sugar and vinegar penetrate it, so the flavours blend. Under-boiling leaves the tomato firm and the flavour sharp and uneven.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, pepper, mustard, horseradish, onion):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, pepper, mustard, horseradish, onion. 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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