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Tomato Preserves

A sweet tomato preserve made with sugar, lemons, and tomatoes, cooked into a syrup.

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

Prepare

  1. Remove the skins from the tomatoes.

  2. Combine the tomatoes and sugar in a bowl.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  4. Pour off the juice.

Make the preserves

  1. Cook the remaining mixture down to a rich syrup.

  2. Slice the lemons thinly.

  3. Boil the sliced lemons in water until the peels are tender.

  4. Add the cooked lemons to the syrup.

  5. Add the tomatoes and cook until they are transparent.

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

Tomatoes
Form the body of the preserves and, once cooked in syrup, become tender and translucent.
Sugar
Draws juice out of the tomatoes and cooks down into a thick, sweet syrup that preserves them.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma, and their peels contribute a bright, slightly bitter flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the remaining mixture down to a rich syrup. Sugar must concentrate enough by evaporation to reach a thick syrup. If cooked too briefly the preserves stay runny and may spoil; if cooked too long the sugar can crystallize or caramelize and turn bitter.

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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