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Spiced Tomatos

A preserved tomato dish flavored with vinegar, sugar, and spices, simmered slowly over several days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Spiced Tomatos

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Peel and slice the tomatoes.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the vinegar and sugar to make a syrup.

  3. Pour the syrup over the tomatoes and let it sit overnight.

Steep and simmer

  1. The next morning, strain the syrup, heat it, and pour it over the tomatoes again.

  2. On the third morning, combine everything in a kettle, add the spices, and boil slowly for 1 hour or until thick.

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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and bulk of the preserve as they soften and break down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the syrup as it reduces.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives a sharp balance to the sweet syrup and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Boiling the tomatoes slowly until thick. Simmering gently lets water evaporate and sugar concentrate without scorching, so the mixture thickens evenly. Boiling too hard can burn the sugar on the bottom of the kettle.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar. 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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