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Plum Tomato Preserves

Preserves made from plum tomatoes, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,592 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Plum Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the tomatoes

  1. Combine the tomatoes, sugar, and lemon juice in a bowl and let it sit overnight.

Cook the preserves

  1. Drain off the syrup and boil it, skimming off any foam.

  2. Add the tomatoes to the boiling syrup and cook gently for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the tomatoes with a skimmer and spread them on dishes.

  4. Boil the syrup until it thickens, then add the lemon juice just before removing from heat.

  5. Place the fruit into a jar and fill it with hot syrup.

  6. Seal the jar once cooled.

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

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Yellow tomatoes
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and holds its shape in the syrup.
Sugar
Draws out moisture and, once boiled, thickens into a syrup that preserves the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps the preserves set.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup until it thickens. Syrup must reach a thick, concentrated state so the fruit is preserved and sets properly. Adding the lemon juice just before removing from heat keeps its bright acidity fresh.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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