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Dessert

Yellow Tomato Preserves

Preserves yellow tomatoes with sugar, water, lemon, and clarified egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,480 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Yellow Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel and prick the tomatoes with a large needle.

  2. Weigh the tomatoes and use 1 pound of sugar for each pound of fruit.

  3. Combine sugar and water in a preserving kettle and dissolve slowly.

  4. Boil the mixture until rich.

  5. Add the tomatoes to the boiling mixture.

  6. Remove the tomatoes and place them on platters.

  7. Leave the tomatoes on platters for 1 hour.

Make the syrup

  1. Clarify the syrup with the well-beaten white of an egg.

  2. Boil the syrup well.

  3. Add the sliced lemon to the boiling syrup.

  4. Let the syrup boil until very rich.

Finish and can

  1. Drop the tomatoes into the syrup.

  2. Cook for a few moments before canning.

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. Plum + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Plum + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Little plum-shaped tomatoes
Provide the fruit that is candied and preserved in the sugar syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, concentrated in the syrup, preserves it and gives body.
Lemon
Adds acidity and a bright flavor that balances the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Let the syrup boil until very rich. The syrup must reach a high sugar concentration so the tomatoes are preserved and hold their shape. If it is too thin, the fruit can spoil or become watery in the jar.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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