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Dessert

Tomato Jam

A sweet preserve made from tomatoes, sugar, lemons, and cloves, simmered until glazed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Tomato Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the tomatoes and cut them up.

  2. Combine the tomatoes and sugar in equal parts.

  3. Add the cut lemons and cloves.

Stew

  1. Let the mixture stew until it is glazed, about 3 hours.

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
Make up the bulk of the jam and provide its fruity, mildly tart base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as water evaporates, thickens the mixture and helps preserve it.
Lemons
Add acidity that balances the sweetness, and the rind contributes pectin to help it set.
Cloves
Contribute a warm, spicy aroma.

The step that matters

Stew until glazed. As water evaporates, the sugar and fruit concentrate and the mixture thickens. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while too much heat can scorch the sugar, so watch the mixture closely through the long cook.

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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