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Dessert

Tomato Preserve

A sweet and tangy tomato preserve made with vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate

  1. Combine tomatoes, vinegar, and sugar in a large pot.

  2. Let the mixture sit for five days.

Cook and reduce

  1. Boil until the tomatoes are tender.

  2. Remove the tomatoes and continue boiling the juice until it reduces to half.

  3. Add cinnamon and allspice to the reduced juice and stir well.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Tomato + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together670 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the preserve and its body as they soften during cooking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps preserve the mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and draws moisture out of the tomatoes, softening them and thickening the syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic flavor to the reduced juice.
Allspice
Adds warm aromatic flavor to the reduced juice.

The step that matters

Reducing the juice to half. Boiling the juice long enough to halve it concentrates the sugar and acid, thickening the syrup and setting the flavor. Stopping early leaves a thin, watery preserve that may not keep well.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, allspice. 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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