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Ripe Tomato Preserves

A sweet preserve made by cooking ripe tomatoes with sugar, lemons, and optional ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger 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 ↓

Ripe Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the tomatoes

  1. Combine tomatoes and sugar in a bowl and let them stand overnight.

Cook the preserves

  1. In the morning, drain off the syrup and boil it, skimming well.

  2. Add the tomatoes to the boiling syrup and cook gently for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the tomatoes with a skimmer and continue boiling the syrup until it thickens.

  4. Ten minutes before removing from heat, add the sliced lemons and ginger root if desired.

Jar and seal

  1. Place the tomatoes into jars and fill with the hot syrup.

  2. Seal the jars once they are cool.

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 + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the preserves and release juice that becomes the syrup.
Sugar
Draws water out of the tomatoes and thickens the syrup, while preserving the fruit.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavor and helps the preserves set.

The step that matters

Continue boiling the syrup until it thickens. Syrup that is not boiled long enough stays thin and runny. Sugar must concentrate to a thick consistency so the preserves hold their shape and keep well in jars.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, sugar, lemon):

  1. Corianderfits better
  2. Basilfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, 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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