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Tomato Preserve

A sweet tomato preserve made with tomatoes, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald and peel the tomatoes.

  2. If there is too much juice, let them stand and pour away some.

  3. Remove the white part of the lemon and slice the rest.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine the tomatoes, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and the grated yellow skin of the lemon.

  2. Cook the mixture until thick, stirring often.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 red tomatoes
Provide the main body and bulk of the preserve as they break down while cooking.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens it as the mixture cooks down into a spread.
Lemon
Its grated yellow skin adds aroma and brightness, balancing the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until thick, stirring often. Sugar and tomato juice thicken as water evaporates, and the mixture can scorch on the bottom of the pot if it is not stirred frequently. Stirring keeps the sugars from burning and the texture even.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, cinnamon, 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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