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Green Tomato Preserves

Preserved green tomatoes in a sweet lemon-ginger syrup.

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 ↓

Green Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Pierce each tomato with a fork.

  2. In a large pot, combine tomatoes, sugar, lemon juice, and ginger-mace mixture.

  3. Heat slowly and boil until the fruit is clear.

  4. Remove the tomatoes with a perforated skimmer and spread them on dishes to cool.

  5. Boil the syrup until thick.

Jar and store

  1. Place the tomatoes in jars and pour the hot syrup over them.

  2. Store in a cool, dry place.

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. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the preserve and hold their shape while cooking in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it thickens into syrup, helps preserve it.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and supports the preserve's keeping quality.
Ginger and mace mixture
Adds warm, spicy aroma that flavours the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Sugar syrup must reach a high enough concentration to thicken and preserve the fruit. Stopping early leaves a thin syrup that spoils more easily, while overcooking can make it stiff or sugary.

Swap the mace

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

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

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