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Dessert

Yellow Tomato Preserve

A preserve made from yellow tomatoes, sugar, ginger, lemons, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Yellow Tomato Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Soak the ginger root overnight in 1 quart of water.

  2. Use the soaking water to make a syrup with the tomatoes and sugar.

  3. Boil the tomatoes, sugar, and ginger water for 2 hours.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the ginger root tied in a cheesecloth bag, then remove the bag.

  2. Peel and cut up the lemons.

  3. Add the rind of 2 lemons.

  4. Boil the mixture for an additional 2 hours.

  5. Put the preserve in jars and seal.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,887 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Small yellow tomatoes
Form the bulk of the preserve and soften into a thick, fruity body as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it concentrates, helps it thicken and keep.
Ginger root
Adds a warm, spicy aroma and flavour that infuses the syrup.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness, and their rind contributes pectin that helps the preserve set.

The step that matters

Boiling for the full time, both times. Long boiling drives off water so the sugar and fruit concentrate and thicken. Cutting the boil short, especially after the lemons go in, can leave the preserve runny and less stable in storage.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, ginger, lemon):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, lemon. 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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