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Dessert

Tomato Preserve

A sweet tomato preserve made with sugar, ginger, and lemon, cooked until thick and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon 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 ↓

Tomato Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Skin the tomatoes by pouring hot water over them.

  2. Cover the tomatoes with sugar in an earthen or porcelain bowl and let stand overnight.

  3. In the morning, pour off the syrup and transfer the tomatoes to another dish.

  4. Scrape out the settled sugar and add it to the syrup.

Make the preserve

  1. Boil the syrup until thick, then skim off any foam.

  2. Add the tomatoes, ginger, and lemons (cut into ½ inch half slices, seeds removed) to the syrup.

  3. Cook until the tomatoes look somewhat clear.

Jar and seal

  1. Fill sterilized jars with the mixture, place rubber seals dipped in hot water, and screw on sterilized covers.

  2. Cool, tighten the covers, and seal with paraffin.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Pear + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow pear tomatoes
Provide the main fruit body and bulk of the preserve.
Sugar
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes and, when cooked thick, preserves them and gives sweetness.
Preserved canton ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma and a sweet-spicy flavour that contrasts the tomatoes.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick, then skim off any foam. Sugar must concentrate enough to thicken and help preserve the fruit; under-boiled syrup stays thin and spoils sooner, while foam left on the surface can cloud the preserve and spoil its appearance.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, ginger, 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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