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Dessert

Tomato Figs

A preserved dish of tomatoes dried in sun after stewing 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 Figs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Scald the tomatoes and remove the skins.

  2. In a porcelain kettle, layer the tomatoes and sprinkle thickly with sugar.

  3. Place over a moderate fire and stew slowly until the sugar penetrates the tomatoes.

  4. Carefully lift each tomato with a spoon and spread them on dishes.

Dry and pack

  1. Dry the tomatoes in the hot sun for one to two days, sprinkling with sugar several times.

  2. Once perfectly dry, pack them in jars with layers of sugar between.

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

Ripe small smooth tomatoes
Provide the fruit body that softens during stewing and concentrates into a chewy, dried texture.
Granulated sugar
Draws water out of the tomatoes, sweetens them, and helps preserve them during drying and storage.

The step that matters

Drying until perfectly dry before packing. Any moisture left in the tomatoes can allow mould or fermentation in the jars. Sugar and dryness work together to preserve them, so they must be fully dried before being layered with sugar and sealed away.

“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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