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Tomato Preserves

A sweet and tangy tomato preserve made with sugar, egg white, and optional ginger or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald the tomatoes.

  2. Peel the tomatoes carefully.

  3. Prick each tomato with a needle to prevent bursting.

  4. Weigh the tomatoes.

  5. Add an equal amount of sugar.

  6. Let the mixture sit overnight.

Make the syrup

  1. Pour the juice into a preserving kettle.

  2. Boil until it thickens into a syrup, clarifying with the egg white.

  3. Add the tomatoes.

  4. Boil gently until they look transparent.

  5. Optionally, add thinly sliced root ginger or lemon while cooking.

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

Tomatoes
Form the body of the preserve and turn translucent as they cook in the syrup.
Sugar
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes and thickens the syrup, giving sweetness and preserving the fruit.
Egg white
Binds to impurities as it cooks, so they can be skimmed off and the syrup comes out clear.

The step that matters

Boil until the syrup thickens, clarifying with the egg white. The syrup must be brought to a thick, clear state before the tomatoes go in. Egg white coagulates and carries impurities to the surface for skimming. Boiling too hard can make the syrup cloudy or scorch it.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pear, sugar, egg, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Corianderfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pear, sugar, egg, 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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