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Tomato Preserves

Preserves made by boiling tomatoes with vinegar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle salt on the tomatoes and let them stand for 2 hours.

Cook

  1. Boil the tomatoes until the scum ceases to rise, skimming it off as it appears.

  2. Add vinegar and spices to the tomatoes.

  3. Boil slowly until the tomatoes are transparent, ensuring to remove any scum.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the main body of the preserve and turn tender and translucent as they cook down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the tomatoes.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma that flavours the preserves.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until the tomatoes are transparent. Boiling too hard can break the tomatoes apart and scorch the sugars on the bottom of the pot. A slow simmer lets them soften evenly and clear while the scum rises and can be skimmed.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, vinegar, cinnamon, allspice, clove, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, cinnamon, allspice, clove, pepper. 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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