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Dessert

Tomato Butter

A preserve made from tomatoes and apples, sweetened with sugar and flavored with cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Tomato Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pass the tomatoes and apples through a sieve.

  2. In a pot, combine the sieved mixture with sugar and ground cinnamon.

  3. Cook over medium heat until it resembles a preserve.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Tomato + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Tomato
Provides the main body and tart, savory base of the butter.
Apple
Adds natural pectin and body, helping the butter thicken as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the butter and helps it thicken into a spreadable, preserve-like texture.

The step that matters

Cooking until it resembles a preserve. Cook slowly and stir often over medium heat so the sugar and fruit concentrate and thicken evenly. Too little cooking leaves it runny, while scorching on the bottom gives a burnt taste.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon. 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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