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Yellow Tomato Preserves

Preserves made by boiling yellow tomatoes with sugar and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 143 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Yellow Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes to loosen the skins.

  2. Boil the tomatoes with an equal amount of sugar for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the sliced lemons and boil slowly for an additional 1.5 hours.

  4. Stir often to prevent burning.

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. Peach + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

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

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

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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the preserve and, as they cook down, supply its body and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it thicken as the mixture cooks down.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright flavor, and their slices contribute pectin to help the preserve set.

The step that matters

Stir often to prevent burning.. Sugar-rich mixtures scorch on the bottom of the pan during long, slow boiling, and the sugar concentrates as water evaporates. Frequent stirring keeps the bottom from overheating and gives an even, well-set preserve.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, 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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