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Dessert

Tomato Figs

A sweet preserve made by boiling tomatoes with sugar and drying them.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,667 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Tomato Figs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes to remove the skin.

  2. Weigh the tomatoes and place them in a stone jar with an equal amount of sugar.

  3. Let them sit for two days.

Make the syrup

  1. Pour off the syrup, boil it, and skim until no more scum rises.

  2. Repeat this process three times.

  3. If the weather is good, dry the tomatoes; if not, leave them in the syrup until the weather improves.

Dry and pack

  1. Place the tomatoes on earthen plates or dishes in the sun to dry for about a week.

  2. Once dry, pack them in small wooden boxes with white sugar between each layer.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the fruit that is softened in syrup and then dried into a chewy, concentrated texture.
Sugar
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes and preserves them, adding sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling and skimming the syrup. Each boiling and skimming pass removes scum that forms on the surface. Repeating it three times helps the syrup run clearer and keeps the preserve from spoiling as it dries.

“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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