Skip to main content
Dessert

Tomato Marmalade

A sweet preserve made from tomatoes, sugar, lemon juice, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Tomato Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Layer the sliced tomatoes, granulated sugar, lemon juice, and raisins in a kettle.

  2. Cook over medium heat for 1 hour or until the mixture is quite thick.

  3. Pack the marmalade into jars and cover.

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 + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Tomato + raisintop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main bulk and body that cooks down into the marmalade.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves, helps the mixture thicken into a preserve.
Lemons
Add acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the marmalade.

The step that matters

Cooking until quite thick. Sugar and fruit pectin set as water evaporates, so the mixture thickens only with long enough cooking. Stopping early leaves a runny marmalade that may not hold once cooled.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, raisin. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes