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Ripe Tomato Marmalade

A preserve made by cooking ripe tomatoes with oranges, lemon, and sugar until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Ripe Tomato Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Boil the tomatoes until very tender.

  2. Strain the tomatoes.

  3. Chop the lemon and oranges very fine, including the peels but excluding the seeds.

  4. Add the chopped lemon and oranges to the strained tomatoes.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the sugar and boil all together until thick.

  2. Pour into sterilized glasses and cover with paraffin when cold.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together689 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the marmalade once cooked down and strained.
Oranges
Add bitter aromatic peel and citrus acidity that balance the sweetness.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma from its peel, brightening the flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it boils, thickens it into a spreadable set.

The step that matters

Boil all together until thick. Sugar must be dissolved and the mixture boiled long enough to reach setting concentration. Undercooked marmalade stays runny, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and darken the flavor.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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