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Dessert

Tomato Marmalade

A preserve made from unripe tomatoes, sugar, and sliced lemons, boiled until thickened.

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 Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and slice the unripe tomatoes without wetting them.

Cook

  1. Boil the tomatoes slowly for several hours until much of the water has evaporated.

  2. Add ¾ pound of sugar and the sliced lemons for each pound of tomatoes.

  3. Boil for one more hour.

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

Unripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the marmalade, releasing water that slowly evaporates during cooking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as the syrup concentrates, helps the marmalade thicken.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Slow boil until the water has evaporated. Simmering gently for several hours drives off water so the mixture concentrates. Adding sugar before enough water is gone can leave the marmalade thin, while a rapid boil risks scorching the sugars on the bottom of the pan.

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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