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Tomato Preserves

A sweet tomato preserve made by boiling tomatoes with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,667 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald and peel the tomatoes.

  2. Combine the tomatoes with the sugar and let them sit overnight.

Make the syrup

  1. Remove the tomatoes and boil the syrup, skimming off any scum.

  2. Add the tomatoes back to the syrup and boil gently for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the tomatoes and continue boiling the syrup until it thickens.

Jar and serve

  1. Once cooled, place the fruit in jars and pour the syrup over them.

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the fruit that is preserved, supplying bulk and most of the texture.
White sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, by drawing out moisture, forms the syrup that preserves it.

The step that matters

Continue boiling the syrup until it thickens. Sugar concentration rises as water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves a thin syrup that spoils more easily, while over-boiling can turn the syrup hard or sticky once cooled.

“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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