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Dessert

Green Tomato Preserves

Preserves made from green tomatoes, sugar, lemon, water, and ginger, simmered until translucent and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger 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 ↓

Green Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Slice lemons very thin.

  2. Place lemons in a kettle with water and gradually add sugar until dissolved over low heat.

  3. Add ginger and then the tomatoes, keeping the heat low to preserve their shape.

  4. Simmer until the fruit is transparent.

Jar and seal

  1. Lift out the tomatoes with a perforated spoon and place them in jars.

  2. Move the syrup to a hotter place, add the sliced lemons, and cook until the syrup thickens.

  3. Pour the thickened syrup over the tomatoes and seal the jars.

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 + gingertop 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

Green pear tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the preserve and, once simmered, become translucent and tender.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as a concentrated syrup, helps it thicken and preserve the fruit.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma, and their sliced peel and pith contribute natural pectin to help the syrup set.
Green root ginger
Adds a warm, sharp aroma that balances the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Keep the heat low when adding the tomatoes. High heat makes the fruit's skin split and its flesh break down before it can firm up in the syrup. Gentle simmering lets sugar slowly replace the water in the fruit, keeping the tomatoes whole and clear.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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