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Tomato Marmalade

A preserve made from tomatoes, sugar, lemon juice and rind, optionally with ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tomato Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skins from the tomatoes.

  2. Mix the tomatoes with the sugar.

Cook

  1. Boil for 1 hour.

  2. Add the lemon juice and rind.

  3. Boil for an additional 30 minutes.

  4. If desired, add ginger root during the last boiling.

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

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

  2. Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 marmalade and its tart, fruity flavor as they break down.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and thickens it as the mixture cooks down into a preserve.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aromatic citrus oils from the rind to brighten the sweet tomato.

The step that matters

Boil for 1 hour before adding the lemon. The long boil lets the tomatoes break down and the sugar concentrate and thicken, so the mixture sets properly once the lemon is added and cooking continues.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, sugar, lemon):

  1. Corianderfits better
  2. Basilfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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