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Dessert

Tomato Preserve

A sweet tomato preserve made with sugar, ginger, and lemon, simmered until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tomato Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Wipe the tomatoes and cover them with boiling water. Let them stand until the skins can be easily removed.

  2. Add the sugar to the tomatoes, cover, and let it stand overnight.

Make the syrup

  1. In the morning, pour off the syrup.

  2. Boil it until thick.

  3. Skim off any foam.

Cook the preserve

  1. Add the tomatoes, sliced ginger, and sliced lemons (seeds removed) to the syrup.

  2. Cook until the tomatoes have a clarified appearance.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Pear + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,887 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow pear tomatoes
Provide the fruit that becomes the preserve, softening and turning translucent as they cook in syrup.
Sugar
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes and thickens the syrup, while preserving the fruit through its sweetness.
Preserved canton ginger
Adds spicy aroma and a sweet, warm flavour that contrasts with the tomatoes.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Cook until the tomatoes have a clarified appearance. Cooking in thick sugar syrup must continue long enough for the tomatoes to turn translucent and the syrup to thicken. Stopping too early leaves a watery, cloudy preserve that may not keep well.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, ginger, 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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