Why it works: Tomato and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,076 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓
Tomato Marmalade
Ingredients
Directions
Remove the stems from the green tomatoes and stew them until soft.
Rub the stewed tomatoes through a sieve to obtain the pulp.
In a pot, combine the pulp with pepper, coarse sea salt, pounded cloves, and garlic.
Stew the mixture until it thickens.
For sweet marmalade, mix loaf sugar with the pulp and stew until it becomes a stiff jelly.
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.
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Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together14,076 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
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Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together17,451 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,923 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,090 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,368 recipes
Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the clove
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, garlic, sugar):
- Basilfits better
- Cuminfits better
- Oreganofits better
- Clovethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, garlic, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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