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Tomato Butter

Tomato Butter is a preserved tomato dish made by boiling tomatoes in a vinegar‑sugar spice syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover peeled tomatoes with vinegar and let them stand overnight.

Make the butter

  1. In the morning, make a syrup with vinegar, sugar, cloves, mace, cinnamon, salt, and red pepper.

  2. Heat the syrup until hot, then add the tomatoes.

  3. Boil slowly for 4 hours or until thick.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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 butter and its fruity flavor and body as they break down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with long cooking, helps thicken the butter to a spreadable consistency.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sugar and helps preserve the bright tomato flavor.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 4 hours. Long, gentle simmering lets water evaporate so the mixture thickens without scorching. Too much heat can burn the sugar and stick to the pan, so stir often and keep the boil slow.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, clove, cinnamon, 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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