Skip to main content
Dessert

Ripe Tomato Preserves

A sweet tomato preserve made with ripe tomatoes, sugar, and lemon juice.

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

Ripe Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald the tomatoes.

  2. Slip off the skins.

  3. Combine the tomatoes and sugar in a bowl.

  4. Let stand overnight.

Make the syrup

  1. Drain off the syrup.

  2. Boil it, skimming well.

  3. Add the tomatoes to the syrup.

  4. Boil gently for 20 minutes.

  5. Remove the fruit with a perforated skimmer.

  6. Spread on dishes to cool.

  7. Add the juice of the lemons after the syrup has thickened.

Jar the preserves

  1. Put the preserves in jars.

  2. Fill with hot syrup.

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 that becomes the bulk of the preserves and softens during gentle boiling.
Sugar
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes and forms a thick syrup that preserves and sweetens the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps balance the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Add the lemon juice after the syrup has thickened. Acid added too early can interfere with sugar thickening and can invert sugar, so timing matters. Adding it once the syrup has thickened keeps the set and flavor balanced.

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.

More tomato preserves recipes

Green 21Yellow 8Spiced 3 See all 76 →

You might also like

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