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Tomato Butter

A preserved tomato butter made by pickling tomatoes in vinegar and sweetened with brown sugar, flavored with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel the tomatoes and cover them with 1 pint of vinegar.

  2. Let them sit overnight.

  3. Drain the tomatoes in a colander.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by heating 1 cup of vinegar, 2.5 lbs of brown sugar, 1.5 cups of tomato juice, 1 tablespoon of salt, and 1 teaspoon of red pepper.

  2. Place the whole chives, allspice, and stick cinnamon in a muslin bag and add to the syrup.

  3. Heat the syrup before adding the tomatoes.

Cook

  1. Boil slowly for five hours, leaving the spices in until sufficiently flavored.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Chive + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the butter and supply its fruity, acidic body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the butter thicken and turn glossy as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the sugar and helps preserve the tomatoes.
Tomato juice
Adds extra tomato liquid to the syrup, deepening flavour and moisture.

The step that matters

Long, slow boil. Sugar-rich tomato mixtures can scorch on the bottom of the pot during a five-hour simmer. Stirring regularly and keeping the heat low lets water evaporate gradually, so the butter thickens evenly without burning.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, syrup, sugar, pepper, chive, allspice, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, syrup, sugar, pepper, chive, allspice, cinnamon. 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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