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Tomato Preserve

A sweet tomato preserve made by cooking tomatoes with sugar, cinnamon, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tomato Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Soak the tomatoes in lime water overnight.

  2. Wash the tomatoes in two or three changes of water.

  3. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the sugar with a little water.

  2. Boil the mixture until it forms a thick syrup.

Cook the preserve

  1. Add the tomatoes to the syrup.

  2. Cook slowly for 2 to 3 hours until the syrup is nice.

  3. Add the cinnamon sticks to the pot.

  4. Cut the lemon in half and add it to the pot.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Half-ripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the preserve and absorb the sugar syrup as they cook.
Sugar
Forms the thick syrup that preserves the tomatoes and gives sweetness.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet syrup and helps balance the flavor.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 2 to 3 hours. Slow cooking lets water evaporate gradually so the sugar syrup thickens without scorching. Cooking too fast can burn the sugar and leave the tomatoes tough or unevenly cooked.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, 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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