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Dessert

Green Tomato Figs

A preserve made from green tomatoes, sugar, lemon juice, ginger, mace, cinnamon, and sliced lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Figs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Pierce each tomato with a fork.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a porcelain kettle and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the sliced lemon and boil until the fruit is clear.

Finish and jar

  1. Remove the fruit with a skimmer and lay on platters to cool.

  2. Boil the syrup until thick, adding lemon juice 10 minutes before it's done.

  3. Place the fruit into jars and pour hot syrup over 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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the jam and its firm, mild body once cooked in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, as it dissolves into syrup, helps preserve the fruit and thicken the syrup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps the jam set.
Lemon, sliced
Contributes acidity, citrus aroma, and pectin from the peel and pith.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup until thick. Sugar concentration and boiling off water are what set the syrup. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while boiling too long can scorch the sugar or over-darken the jam. Adding lemon juice near the end preserves its brightness.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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