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Sweet Tomato Preserves

Sweet tomato preserves made by boiling tomatoes with sugar, ginger, and lemons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon 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 ↓

Sweet Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Boil the tomatoes until the skin can be easily removed.

Make the preserves

  1. For every pound of fruit, add 1 pound of sugar, ½ pound of ginger, and 4 sliced lemons.

  2. Boil all ingredients together for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the tomatoes and boil the syrup for 20 minutes.

  4. Pour the syrup over the fruit in 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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and ginger 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

Small yellow tomatoes
Provide the fruit that is cooked down into the preserves.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserves and thickens the syrup as it boils.
Ginger
Adds a sharp, aromatic flavour to the preserves.
Lemons
Add acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup for 20 minutes. Boiling the syrup long enough concentrates the sugar so it thickens and preserves the fruit. Stopping too early leaves a thin syrup that may spoil sooner.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, 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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