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Drink

Beer, Tomato

A sweetened tomato beverage made by fermenting tomato juice with sugar, water, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,592 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Beer, Tomato

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Gather ripe tomatoes.

  2. Wash the tomatoes.

  3. Remove the stems.

  4. Mash the tomatoes.

  5. Strain the mash through a coarse linen bag.

  6. Add 1 lb of brown sugar to every gallon of juice.

Let it sit and clarify

  1. Let the mixture sit for 9 to 10 days.

  2. Pour off the clear portion through a cloth.

  3. Leave the thick part at the bottom.

  4. Bottle the liquid tightly.

Finish with sweetened water

  1. Fill a pitcher nearly full of fresh sweetened water.

  2. Add some tomato liquid.

  3. Add a few drops of lemon essence.

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

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main liquid and the base flavor of the drink.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and feeds the fermentation that develops the drink.
Essence of lemon
Adds a light citrus aroma to the finished drink.

The step that matters

Pour off the clear portion through a cloth. The thick sediment settles at the bottom during the resting period. Pouring off only the clear liquid keeps the drink from turning cloudy and gritty.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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