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Dessert

Tomato Figs

Dried tomatoes sweetened with sugar and preserved in syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,667 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Tomato Figs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald and remove the skins from the tomatoes.

  2. Cook the tomatoes in their own juice until the sugar penetrates and they are clarified.

Dry and pack

  1. Spread the tomatoes on dishes and dry them in the sun, sprinkling a small quantity of sugar over them while drying.

  2. Once dried, pack them in a stone jar, layering with sugar and reserving some sugar for packing.

  3. Boil the syrup down and bottle it.

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. Sugar + tomatotop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body of the preserve, with their juice forming the syrup as they cook.
Sugar
Penetrates the tomatoes, sweetens them and draws out moisture to preserve them.

The step that matters

Cooking the tomatoes in their own juice until clarified. Sugar must penetrate the tomato flesh slowly so it becomes translucent and firm. Cooking too hard or too fast can break the pieces apart and leave the sugar unabsorbed, so the tomatoes lose their shape.

“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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