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Dessert

Tomato Jam

A sweet preserve made from apples, tomatoes, sugar, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the fruit

  1. Stew the apples separately.

  2. Stew the tomatoes separately.

  3. Combine the stewed apples and tomatoes in a kettle.

Sweeten and cook

  1. Add sugar, ground cloves, and ground cinnamon.

  2. Cook until thickened to desired consistency.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

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

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

Apples
Their natural pectin helps the jam thicken and set as it cooks.
Tomatoes
They supply most of the bulk and moisture, which cooks down into the jam's body.
Sugar
It adds sweetness and, as water evaporates, helps build a thick, spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened to desired consistency. Thickening depends on water evaporating as the mixture simmers, and sugar concentrates as this happens. Stop too early and the jam stays runny; cook too long, or with too little stirring, and the sugar can scorch on the bottom of the kettle.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, clove, 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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