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Dessert

Tomato Sorbet

A chilled tomato-based sorbet flavored with lemon, apples, apricot jam, and optional rum or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Tomato Sorbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Slice the tomatoes and place them in a pan with water, lemon juice, sliced apples, apricot jam, and sugar.

  2. Bring to a boil, then simmer until tender enough to pulp.

  3. If necessary, add a few drops of liquid carmine and strain through a tammy.

  4. Once cool, flavor with rum or brandy to taste.

Freeze

  1. Freeze a little of the mixture, fill the center of a mold, close it, and freeze for 2 to 3 hours.

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. Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Apple + rumtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Apricot + rumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Tomato + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenol (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe red tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavor, and bulk of the sorbet.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the sorbet scoopable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness, fruity aroma, and body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Simmering until tender enough to pulp. Under-cooked fruit stays fibrous and gives a grainy texture, while over-cooking dulls fresh flavor. Straining after cooling removes remaining fibers for a smooth sorbet.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, apple, apricot, sugar, rum. 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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