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To Preserve Tomatoes

A method for preserving ripe tomatoes by boiling them with sugar, lemon, and optional ginger.

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 ↓

To Preserve Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the tomatoes in boiling water.

  2. Weigh the tomatoes.

  3. Use 1 pound of sugar for every pound of fruit.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with as little water as possible.

  2. Remove seeds from the lemon slices.

  3. Add the seeds to the syrup.

  4. When the syrup is clear, add the tomatoes.

  5. Boil for about 1 hour.

  6. Optionally, add a few pieces of white ginger to the syrup while boiling.

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. 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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main fruit, which softens and holds its shape in the sugar syrup.
Sugar
Preserves the fruit by drawing out water and adding sweetness.
Lemon
Adds acidity and natural pectin to help the syrup set and balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Make a syrup with as little water as possible. Sugar preserves fruit by drawing out its water, so too much added water makes the syrup thin and slows thickening, leaving the fruit less stable during the long boil.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, sugar, lemon):

  1. Corianderfits better
  2. Basilfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, 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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