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Dessert

Tomatoes Preserved

This is a preserved tomato recipe using sugar, water, and lemon peel to create a syrup.

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 ↓

Tomatoes Preserved

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes.

  2. Peel off the skins.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Combine 1 pound of sugar with ¼ cup of water in a pot.

  2. Heat until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is boiling.

  3. Add the peeled tomatoes to the syrup.

  4. Let them boil gently.

  5. Boil the lemons in water until the peels are tender.

  6. Cut the lemon peels into very thin slices.

  7. Stir the sliced lemon peels into the pot.

  8. Continue boiling until the tomatoes are clear and the syrup is rich.

Cool and store

  1. Transfer the tomatoes to flat dishes to cool.

  2. Boil the syrup until it is very rich and thick.

  3. Let it cool and settle.

  4. Place the tomatoes in jars or pots.

  5. Pour the syrup over them.

  6. Cover the jars.

  7. Store them in a dry place.

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. Sugar + tomatotop 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

Tomatoes
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and clear as they cook in the syrup.
Sugar
Dissolves into the syrup, providing sweetness and thickening it as it reduces.
Lemons
Add acidity and aromatic peel that balances the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Continue boiling until the tomatoes are clear and the syrup is rich. Sugar concentration must rise high enough to draw water out of the fruit and preserve it. Stopping early leaves a thin syrup that spoils more easily.

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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