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Dessert

Tomato Preserves

A sweet tomato preserve made with sugar, ginger, and lemon, simmered into a thick syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon 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 Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald and carefully remove the skins from the tomatoes.

  2. Weigh the tomatoes and add an equal amount of sugar.

  3. Let the mixture sit overnight.

Cook the preserves

  1. Pour off the juice into a preserving kettle and boil until it becomes a very thick syrup.

  2. Add the tomatoes and boil carefully until they look transparent.

  3. Optionally, add a piece or two of root ginger and a few slices of lemon.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Pear + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Small yellow pear-shaped tomatoes
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and translucent as it cooks in syrup.
Sugar
Draws out juice and thickens into syrup, preserving the tomatoes and adding sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the tomatoes in the thick syrup. Boil carefully so the tomatoes stay whole and do not break down. Sugar syrup must be thick enough to pull moisture from the fruit, which is what makes them look transparent.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, ginger, 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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