Skip to main content
Dessert

Tomato Figs

A dish of sun-dried tomatoes sweetened with brown sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pear and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,079 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Tomato Figs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald and skin the tomatoes.

Make the syrup

  1. In a large pot, cook the tomatoes with the brown sugar over medium heat without adding water until the sugar penetrates and the tomatoes are clarified.

  2. Remove the tomatoes.

Dry and pack

  1. Spread the tomatoes on dishes, flattening them.

  2. Dry the tomatoes in the sun.

  3. Sprinkle a little syrup on the tomatoes while drying.

  4. Pack the dried tomatoes in boxes.

  5. Treat each layer with powdered sugar.

Finish the syrup

  1. Boil down any remaining syrup.

  2. Bottle the boiled syrup for later use.

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. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and flavor of the dried product as they lose water.
Brown sugar
Draws water out of the tomatoes and adds sweetness and caramel notes as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking the tomatoes with sugar without water. Without added water, the tomatoes must release their juice slowly over medium heat. Heating too fast can scorch the sugar before it dissolves and penetrates the fruit, leaving a burnt taste.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes