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Dessert

Tomato Marmalade

A sweet and spicy tomato preserve made by cooking tomatoes with sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Tomato Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the tomatoes as you would for serving.

Make the marmalade

  1. Place the tomatoes in a kettle with the sugar and spices.

  2. Cook slowly until the mixture is quite thick.

Jar

  1. Transfer to a jar and pour a little vinegar over the top.

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. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the marmalade and its main flavour and body as they cook down.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and, as it thickens, helps give the marmalade its set and body.
Vinegar
Adds a touch of acidity that brightens the sweet tomato flavour.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until quite thick. Slow cooking lets water evaporate gradually, concentrating the tomatoes and sugar into a thick spread. Cooking too hard can scorch the sugar and sticks to the bottom of the kettle, so stir and keep the heat gentle.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar. 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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