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Tomato Marmalade

A preserved tomato spread made by stewing tomatoes with herbs and garlic, then thickening to marmalade consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tomato Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the tomatoes in half and extract the juice.

  2. In a preserving pan, combine the tomatoes, peach leaves, garlic, onion or shallot, and parsley.

Cook and strain

  1. Stew the mixture until cooked through.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve and mash it to a smooth consistency.

  3. Boil the mixture down until it reaches a marmalade-like thickness, adding salt to taste.

Pot

  1. Transfer the marmalade into small pots and cover with clarified butter and pepper.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  4. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Peach + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, sweetness and acidity that the marmalade is built from.
Garlic
Adds a pungent aroma that mellows during the long stewing.
Parsley
Contributes a fresh herbal aroma to the finished marmalade.

The step that matters

Boiling down to a marmalade-like thickness. Tomatoes are mostly water, so the mixture must be reduced long enough for water to evaporate and the sugars and pectin to concentrate. Stopping early leaves it runny, while over-reducing can scorch it on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, clove, garlic, onion, parsley):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, garlic, onion, parsley. 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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