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Candied Tomatoes

Candied tomatoes are yellow egg tomatoes sweetened with granulated sugar and dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Candied Tomatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald and peel the yellow egg tomatoes.

Candy the tomatoes

  1. Combine equal parts of whole tomatoes and granulated sugar in a pot.

  2. Boil until the tomatoes are clear.

  3. Remove one tomato at a time, roll it in granulated sugar, and place it on a platter.

  4. Let the tomatoes drain and roll them in granulated sugar again until all the juice is gone.

Dry

  1. Place the tomatoes in the sun or a warm oven to dry.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Tomato + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Egg + tomatotop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow egg tomatoes
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and translucent as it cooks in syrup.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the tomatoes and, as a syrup and coating, draws out moisture and forms a dry sugary shell.

The step that matters

Boil until the tomatoes are clear. Sugar syrup must penetrate the tomato flesh gradually. Boiling too hard or too briefly can leave the fruit tough or cloudy, and the sugar may not replace the water inside, so the candied result is uneven.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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