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Preserve

Preserved Tomatoes

A method of preserving tomatoes with lemon, sugar, vinegar, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Preserved Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the thin yellow rind of the lemon and slice it thinly, removing the seeds.

  2. Scald and peel the tomatoes.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Dissolve the sugar in enough water to cover it, then bring to a boil and remove the scum.

  2. Add the tomatoes and cook slowly for two 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. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the preserve and soften as they cook in the syrup.
Light brown sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens the syrup that coats the tomatoes.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fragrance from the rind and juice.

The step that matters

Cook the tomatoes slowly. A gentle simmer lets the tomatoes soften and absorb the syrup while holding their shape. A hard boil breaks them down and can scorch the sugar on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, clove, vinegar. 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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