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Tomato Preserve

A sweet tomato preserve made by boiling tomatoes with sugar and optional ginger or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,887 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald and peel the tomatoes carefully.

  2. Prick each tomato with a needle to prevent bursting.

  3. Weigh the tomatoes and add an equal amount of sugar.

  4. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Cook the preserve

  1. Pour the juice into a preserving kettle and boil until it becomes a thick syrup, clarifying with the white of an egg.

  2. Add the tomatoes and boil carefully until they look transparent.

  3. If desired, add thinly sliced ginger root or lemon while cooking.

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

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

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

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

  3. Tomato + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

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

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 preserve and its fruit flavour and body.
Sugar
Draws out juice and thickens the syrup while preserving the tomatoes through sweetness.
Egg white (in the method)
Clarifies the syrup by binding impurities that rise and can then be skimmed off.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick before adding the tomatoes. Sugar must concentrate into a thick syrup so the tomatoes can become translucent and hold their shape without overcooking or bursting. Boiling too briefly leaves a thin, watery syrup that spoils more easily.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Basilfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar. 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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