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Tomato Preserves

A preserved tomato mixture sweetened with sugar and lemon, cooked into a thick syrup.

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 Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald and peel the ripe tomatoes.

  2. Sprinkle sugar over the tomatoes and let them stand overnight.

Make the syrup

  1. In the morning, pour off the liquid.

  2. Boil the liquid to a thick syrup.

  3. Add the tomatoes to the syrup.

  4. Boil until the tomatoes look clear and well cooked.

Add lemon and jar

  1. Slice a lemon thinly for each pound of tomatoes.

  2. Cook the sliced lemon with the tomatoes.

  3. Put the mixture in a jar.

  4. Cover it tightly 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. 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 fruit that cooks down into the preserve's body and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and draws liquid out of the tomatoes to form the syrup.
Lemon
Adds acidity and its own aroma to balance the sweetness of the tomatoes and sugar.

The step that matters

Boil until the tomatoes look clear and well cooked. Cooking long enough lets the tomatoes absorb the thickened syrup and become translucent. Stopping early leaves a thin, watery preserve that may not keep well in the jar.

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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