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Tomato-jam

A sweet tomato preserve made by cooking tomatoes with sugar and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,592 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tomato-jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald and peel the ripe tomatoes.

  2. Cook the tomatoes in a preserving kettle until tender.

  3. Rub the cooked tomatoes through a sieve using a potato masher.

Make the jam

  1. Weigh the tomato pulp and return it to the kettle with an equal weight of sugar.

  2. Add the grated rind and juice of 2 lemons for each pound of pulp.

  3. Boil the mixture until it looks clear and thickens when cooled on a saucer.

Jar and store

  1. Cool slightly and transfer to air-tight glass jars or cover with paper in glasses.

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

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

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

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

  3. Tomato + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

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

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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and pectin-containing pulp of the jam.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with boiling, helps the jam thicken and keep.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma, and their rind adds natural pectin to help set the jam.

The step that matters

Boil until it thickens on a saucer. Boiling drives off water and concentrates sugar and pectin. Undercooked jam stays runny, while overcooking can make it stiff or dark, so the saucer test shows when it has reached a set.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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