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Tomato Figs

Preserved tomatoes sweetened with sugar and dried in sun.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,667 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Tomato Figs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald and peel the tomatoes.

  2. Place them in a stone jar with an equal weight of sugar.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 2 days.

Make the syrup

  1. Pour off the syrup, boil it, and skim until clear.

  2. Pour the syrup back over the tomatoes and let stand for another 2 days.

  3. Boil and skim the syrup again.

  4. After the third skimming, let the tomatoes sit in the syrup until good drying weather.

Dry and pack

  1. Place the tomatoes on large earthen dishes and let them dry in the sun for about a week.

  2. After drying, pack them in small wooden boxes with fine white sugar between the layers.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Round ripe tomatoes
Provide the fruit that softens in syrup and dries into a chewy, fig-like texture.
Sugar
Draws water out of the tomatoes and preserves them, producing a sweet, thick texture.

The step that matters

Skimming the syrup until clear. Boiling and skimming remove foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the syrup and can ferment or spoil the preserve. Repeating this at each stage keeps the syrup clean as the tomatoes sit in it.

“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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