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Preserve

To Preserve Green Tomatoes

A method for preserving green tomatoes by boiling them with ginger and sugar to create a clear syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,887 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Preserve Green Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Select clear, not very large green tomatoes.

  2. Boil the tomatoes in plenty of water.

Make the ginger syrup

  1. Drain the water and add more water with green ginger.

  2. Boil until the water tastes strongly of ginger.

  3. For every quart of juice, add ¾ pound of sugar to make a syrup.

  4. Add the tomatoes to the syrup and boil until clear.

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

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

  2. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

Ginger and sugar 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 main body and texture of the preserve as they soften and turn clear.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the tomatoes while they turn clear.
Green ginger
Flavours the cooking liquid with a sharp, aromatic warmth.

The step that matters

Boil the tomatoes in the syrup until clear. Boiling too briefly leaves the tomatoes opaque and firm, while overboiling can break them down. Sugar concentration in the syrup draws water out of the fruit, which is why the tomatoes turn translucent.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, sugar. 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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