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Dessert

Red Tomato Preserves

A sweet, thick preserve made from tomatoes, sugar, water, lemon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Red Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald and peel tomatoes, cutting them into about 3 pieces.

  2. Drain off the juice and weigh the tomatoes.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with sugar and water, pour it over the tomatoes while boiling hot, and let it stand until the next morning.

  2. Drain off all the syrup and boil it for 30 minutes, then add the tomatoes.

Cook and store

  1. Cook until the mixture is rich and thick, adding sliced lemons (seeds removed) and cloves while boiling.

  2. The preserves should be a rich, red color when done; they will keep without sealing if stored tightly.

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. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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
Provide the bulk of the preserves and their red color and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserves and, as it thickens into syrup, helps preserve the fruit.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavor and helps balance the sweetness.
Whole cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavor to the preserves.

The step that matters

Cook until rich and thick. Sugar concentration and evaporation must both be sufficient for the preserves to thicken and keep. Stopping early leaves a thin, runny product that spoils more readily.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, clove. 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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