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Dessert

Tomato Jam

A jam made from brown sugar, tomatoes, lemon, and white ginger root.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tomato Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine brown sugar and tomatoes in a preserving kettle.

  2. Remove seeds from the lemon and slice it; add to the kettle.

  3. Add white ginger root to the mixture.

Cook and seal

  1. Cook gently, stirring constantly, for 1 hour.

  2. Seal the jam in jars.

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 + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the jam and its fruity, tangy base.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the jam as it cooks down.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and supports setting.
White ginger root
Adds warm, aromatic spice that complements the tomatoes and sugar.

The step that matters

Cook gently, stirring constantly. Sugar-rich mixtures can scorch on the bottom of the kettle at high heat. Constant stirring and gentle heat let the sugar dissolve and the jam thicken evenly without burning.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, ginger. 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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