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Ripe Tomato Preserves

Preserved ripe tomatoes in a sweet lemon‑sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,592 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Ripe Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Combine tomatoes, sugar, and lemon juice in a bowl and let sit overnight.

  2. Drain the syrup and boil it, skimming off any foam.

Cook

  1. Add the tomatoes to the boiling syrup and cook gently for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the tomatoes with a perforated skimmer and spread them on dishes.

  3. Boil the syrup until it thickens, then add the lemon juice just before removing from heat.

Jar and seal

  1. Place the fruit into jars and fill with hot syrup.

  2. Seal the jars once cooled.

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

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

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

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

  3. Tomato + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Round yellow or green tomatoes
Provide the fruit that softens in syrup and becomes the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, drawing out water, thickens the syrup as it boils.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps keep the preserve set.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until it thickens. Sugar must reach a concentrated syrup to set and preserve the fruit. Undercooked syrup stays thin and can spoil, while overcooking makes it sticky and hard. Add the lemon juice near the end so its acid is not cooked off.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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