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Sauce

Tomato Butter

A sweet sauce made by stewing tomatoes and apples, then seasoning with sugar, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew the tomatoes and apples separately until soft.

  2. Mix the stewed tomatoes and apples together in a kettle.

  3. Add the sugar, ground cloves, and cinnamon to the mixture.

  4. Stir well and cook until thickened.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Provide the main body and moisture that cooks down into a spreadable butter.
Apples
Add pectin and body, helping the butter thicken as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it concentrates, helps the butter set thicker.
Ground cloves
Add a warm, pungent aroma that defines the spiced flavour.
Cinnamon
Adds a sweet, warm aroma that rounds out the spices.

The step that matters

Stir well and cook until thickened. Thick fruit mixtures scorch easily on the base of the kettle, so constant stirring prevents burning. Cooking until thickened lets water evaporate, concentrating the sugar and fruit pectin until the butter sets to a spreadable consistency.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, clove, cinnamon. 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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