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Dessert

Tomato Figs

A preserved sweet tomato product made by boiling, drying, and packing tomatoes with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,667 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Tomato Figs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Skin the tomatoes.

  2. Combine the tomatoes and sugar in a pot.

  3. Boil until the tomatoes are thoroughly infused with sugar.

Dry and pack

  1. Remove the tomatoes and press them flat.

  2. Dry the pressed tomatoes on dishes in the sun, sprinkling with a little sugar occasionally.

  3. Once dry, pack them in boxes, layering with sugar.

  4. Boil down any remaining syrup for future use or for preserving tomatoes.

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 + 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 bulk of the fruit, which softens and absorbs sugar to become chewy and sweet.
Sugar
Infuses into the tomatoes, sweetening them and drawing out moisture so they can dry and keep.

The step that matters

Boil until the tomatoes are thoroughly infused with sugar. Sugar must penetrate the tomato flesh before drying. Sugar draws water out of the fruit through osmosis and helps preserve it, so under-boiled tomatoes may stay wet and spoil while drying.

“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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