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Tomato Preserves

Preserves ripe tomatoes in sugar syrup with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the tomatoes

  1. Sprinkle sugar over tomatoes and let them stand overnight.

Make the syrup

  1. In the morning, drain off the syrup and boil it, skimming often.

  2. Add tomatoes to the boiling syrup and cook slowly for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove tomatoes with a perforated skimmer and spread them on flat dishes.

  4. Boil the syrup down until it begins to thicken, then add lemon juice just before removing from heat.

Jar and seal

  1. Put tomatoes in jars and pour hot syrup over them, then seal or tie with thick paper when cool.

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

Tomatoes
Provide the fruit body and bulk of the preserve, softening as they cook in the syrup.
White sugar
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes and, when concentrated, sets the syrup and preserves the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps the syrup set and keep.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup down to thickness. Sugar syrup thickens as water evaporates and its concentration rises. Stopping too early leaves the preserve runny and prone to spoiling, while overcooking can make it stiff or caramelized. Adding lemon juice just before removing from heat keeps its acidity bright.

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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