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Dessert

Tomato Preserves

A sweet tomato preserve made with sugar, tomatoes, and lemon, cooked to a thick syrup and sealed in jars.

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

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar with water to make a thick syrup.

  2. Drop in the half ripe tomatoes while the syrup is boiling.

Cook and store

  1. Slice the lemons finely and add them to the mixture.

  2. Cook until the mixture reaches a thick, clear syrup.

  3. Seal the preserves in stone jars or set them away to cool.

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. Sugar + tomatotop 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

Sugar
Forms a thick syrup that sweetens the preserves and helps preserve the fruit.
Half ripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the preserves and absorb the sweet syrup as they cook.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture reaches a thick, clear syrup. Sugar must be cooked to a high enough concentration to thicken and preserve the fruit. Stopping early leaves a thin syrup that can spoil, while overcooking can make the preserves hard and sticky.

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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