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Tomato Butter

A sweet tomato and apple preserve made with brown sugar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large pot, bring the tomatoes to a boil.

  2. Add the peeled and cored apples.

Cook down

  1. Cook together for more than half a day, stirring carefully.

  2. After that time, add the brown sugar.

  3. Continue cooking until the juice has cooked out, which takes an entire day.

  4. One hour before finishing, add the allspice, cinnamon, and cloves.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Form the bulk of the butter and supply the base liquid that cooks down into a thick spread.
Apples
Add pectin and body, helping the butter thicken and become spreadable.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel note, and helps preserve the thick texture.
Cloves
Contribute warm aromatic spice flavour that deepens during long cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking until the juice has cooked out. Long, slow evaporation concentrates the mixture into a thick butter. Stopping early leaves it watery, while stirring carefully prevents scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, allspice, cinnamon, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, allspice, cinnamon, clove. 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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