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Tomato Marmalade

A sweet tomato preserve made by boiling tomatoes, removing skins, and cooking the pulp with sugar and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Boil tomatoes in water, then peel them.

  2. Slice the peeled tomatoes and strain through a sieve to obtain the pulp.

Make the marmalade

  1. Combine tomato pulp and sugar in a pot and stew gently until thick.

  2. Stir in lemon juice and zest.

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 main body and pulp that becomes the marmalade.
Sugar
Sweetens the pulp and thickens it as it stews down.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet tomato flavor.
Lemon zest
Adds aromatic citrus oils for fragrance.

The step that matters

Stewing the pulp until thick. Cooking gently and long enough lets water evaporate and the sugar concentrate, so the marmalade sets to a spreadable thickness rather than staying runny.

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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