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Preserve

Preserved Tomatoes

A method for preserving small yellow tomatoes with sugar, lemon, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Preserved Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes and peel them carefully, keeping them whole.

  2. Weigh the tomatoes and measure out an equal weight of sugar.

Make the syrup

  1. In a preserving kettle, combine the sugar and lemon slices with just enough water to moisten the sugar.

  2. Slowly heat the mixture until the sugar dissolves, then boil and skim until clear.

Cook and store

  1. Gently add the tomatoes and boil for 45 minutes.

  2. Cool the tomatoes and store them according to other preserve recipes.

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

Small yellow tomatoes
Provide the fruit that is cooked whole into the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the tomatoes and helps preserve them by drawing out water.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and supports the preserve.

The step that matters

Gently add the tomatoes and boil for 45 minutes. Tomatoes must be added gently so their skins and shapes stay intact. Sugar syrup draws water out of the fruit slowly, so the tomatoes need time in the boiling syrup to become clear and well preserved.

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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