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Pineapple and Tomato Jam

A jam made from pineapple, tomatoes, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and tomato work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple and Tomato Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut the pineapples into small pieces.

  2. Plunge the tomatoes into boiling water until the skins come off easily.

  3. Mix the peeled tomatoes with the pineapple pieces.

Make the jam

  1. Stew the mixture gently until the pineapple is soft.

  2. Add ½ lb of sugar for every 1 lb of the mixture.

  3. Boil until it reaches a jam-like consistency.

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. Pineapple + tomatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. 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

Pineapples
Supply the main fruit, sweetness and juice that cooks down into the jam.
Tomatoes
Add bulk, mild tartness and body as they soften and break down while cooking.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as water evaporates, helps the mixture thicken to a jam-like set.

The step that matters

Boil until jam-like. As water evaporates, the sugar and fruit acids concentrate and the fruit's natural pectin gels. Stop too early and the jam stays runny; boil too long and it can scorch or turn stiff.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar. 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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