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Dessert

Green Tomato Preserves

Preserves made from small green tomatoes, sugar, lemon slices, and water.

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

Green Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the tomatoes in halves crosswise; if larger, quarter the halves.

  2. In a preserving kettle, combine sugar with enough water to dissolve it.

Cook

  1. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the tomatoes and lemon slices.

  2. Simmer gently until the tomatoes are clear and tender.

Jar

  1. Seal the preserves in jars.

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. 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the preserve and soften into tender pieces during simmering.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserves and, in the syrup, helps them keep their texture and shelf life.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the tomatoes are clear and tender. A gentle simmer softens the tomatoes slowly so they become translucent while keeping their shape. A hard boil or overcooking breaks the pieces down into mush and can make the syrup cloudy.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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