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Tomato Preserves

A sweet and tangy tomato preserve made by boiling tomatoes in a sugar syrup with lemon and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and prick the tomatoes with a large needle.

  2. Combine sugar and water in a pot to make a syrup.

  3. Add lemon juice and ginger root to the syrup.

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Boil the tomatoes slowly in the syrup for about 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the tomatoes from the syrup.

  3. Let the tomatoes sun-dry for 2–3 hours.

Finish the syrup

  1. Add the egg white to the syrup.

  2. Boil the syrup with the egg white.

  3. Skim the syrup well.

  4. Pour the syrup over the 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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Plum + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Plum + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together272 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the body of the preserve; their firm flesh holds shape through slow simmering.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and thickens the syrup, helping preserve the tomatoes.
Egg white
Clarifies the syrup; as it boils and sets, it gathers impurities that can then be skimmed off.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet syrup and balances the sugar.
Ginger root
Adds a warm, aromatic flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the tomatoes slowly in the syrup. A gentle simmer lets sugar slowly penetrate the tomatoes while they keep their shape. A hard boil can split the skins and break the fruit apart.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, sugar, lemon, ginger, egg. 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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