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Ripe Tomato Preserves

A sweet preserve made from ripe tomatoes, sugar, lemon, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ripe Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald and peel the tomatoes, then weigh them.

Cook

  1. In a porcelain kettle, combine the tomatoes, sugar, lemon juice and rind, and ginger.

  2. Cook gently for 3 hours, ensuring the tomatoes remain clear and tender.

Jar and seal

  1. Transfer the preserves into tumblers or jars and let them cool.

  2. Once cool, seal the jars as directed in the previous recipe.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 fruity body as they soften during slow cooking.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, at this quantity, helps it set and keeps it preserved.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps the preserve set.
Ginger root
Adds a warm, aromatic note that complements the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Cook gently for 3 hours. Gentle heat lets the tomatoes soften and clear while the sugar dissolves and thickens slowly. Boiling hard can scorch the sugar on the pan base and break the tomatoes into a dark, grainy mass.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, ginger. 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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