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Dessert

Yellow Tomato Preserves

Preserves made by boiling yellow tomatoes with sugar, water, egg white, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,592 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Yellow Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Reel and prick the tomatoes with a large needle.

  2. In a kettle, combine sugar and water; boil until it forms a syrup.

  3. Add the tomatoes to the syrup and boil until they are clear.

  4. Remove the tomatoes and place them on dishes for 1 hour.

Finish and can

  1. After 1 hour, clarify the syrup with the beaten egg white, boil, and skim well.

  2. Add the sliced lemon to the syrup and boil until very rich.

  3. Drop in the tomatoes, cook for a few minutes, and then can.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

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

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

Yellow tomatoes
Provide the fruit, which becomes clear and tender as it cooks in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens the syrup as it boils down.
Egg white
Coagulates when heated, trapping impurities so they can be skimmed off for a clear syrup.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Clarifying the syrup with egg white. As the beaten egg white heats, its proteins set and gather cloudy particles into a foam. Skimming this foam thoroughly keeps the preserve clear rather than cloudy.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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