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Dessert

Tomato Butter

A fruit butter made from apples, tomatoes, lemon, ginger, and sugar, cooked until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger 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 Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and core the apples, then chop them.

  2. Combine the apples, tomatoes, lemons, and ginger in a large pot.

  3. Add sugar to taste.

Cook and store

  1. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened.

  2. Allow to cool before storing.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

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

  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. Apple + tomatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tart apples
Break down into pulp and add natural pectin and tartness to thicken the butter.
Ripe tomatoes
Supply the bulk of the liquid and pulp that cooks down into the butter.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour and helps balance the sweetness.
White ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the butter.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened. Tomato and apple mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of a pot. Constant stirring at moderate heat prevents sticking and burning, and cooking until the pulp thickens concentrates the flavour and sets the butter's texture.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, lemon, ginger, 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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