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Dessert

Tomato Conserve

A preserve made from green tomatoes, lemons, orange, sugar, and crystallized ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tomato Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the green tomatoes, lemons, and orange, removing the seeds from the lemons and orange.

Cook

  1. Bring all the ingredients to a boil.

  2. Add the white sugar and season to taste with finely cut crystallized ginger.

  3. Boil until the mixture is transparent and the syrup thickens.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together689 recipes

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

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

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

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 and body of the preserve.
Lemons
Add acidity and natural pectin that help the preserve set.
Orange
Adds bright citrus aroma and acidity to the preserve.
White sugar
Sweetens and, as it concentrates in the syrup, helps preserve and thicken the mixture.
Crystallized ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture is transparent and the syrup thickens. Cooking long enough concentrates the sugar and lets pectin set the syrup. Stopping too early leaves a runny preserve, while overcooking can make it stiff or sticky.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, sugar, 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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