Skip to main content
Main

Preserved Tomatoes

A preserve made by simmering small green tomatoes with orange or lemon slices in clarified syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Preserved Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the small green tomatoes in cold clarified syrup.

  2. Add 1 sliced orange for every 2 lbs of tomatoes, or 2 fresh lemons for superior preserves.

  3. Simmer over low heat for 2 to 3 hours.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together689 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Orange + syruptop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,179 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Small green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the preserve, becoming tender and holding their shape as they simmer slowly.
Orange
Adds aroma and a bright, slightly bitter citrus note that balances the sweet syrup.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness, and their pectin helps the preserve set.

The step that matters

Simmer over low heat. Slow, gentle simmering keeps the tomatoes intact and tender while the syrup slowly penetrates them. Rapid boiling can break the fruit apart and make the syrup cloudy or overly thick.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon, syrup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, syrup. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes