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Preserve

Spiced Tomato

Preserved tomatoes cooked in a spiced brown sugar and vinegar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,474 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Spiced Tomato

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced syrup

  1. In a pot, combine brown sugar, whole cloves, and vinegar to make a hot spiced syrup.

  2. Let the syrup cook slowly until it thickens to the consistency of molasses.

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Cook the tomatoes in the syrup until tender, then remove them.

  2. Once the tomatoes are cool, return them to the syrup and cook for an additional 10 minutes.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool, then pour the syrup over the tomatoes in jars.

  4. Seal or tie the jars carefully.

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 + tomatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + tomatotop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and body, and thickens the syrup as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps keep the preserves stable.
Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the preserves and soften as they simmer in the syrup.
Whole cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup until it thickens. The syrup must reach a molasses-like consistency through slow reduction. Cooking too briefly leaves it thin and watery, while overcooking can make it too stiff or scorch the sugar.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, vinegar. 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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