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Small Tomato Preserves

Preserves made from small tomatoes, sugar, water, and optional spices, boiled until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Small Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald the tomatoes lightly to remove the skin without breaking them.

  2. Pour a weak solution of lime water over the tomatoes and let them stand overnight.

Cook the preserves

  1. In a pot, combine 3/4 pound of sugar with enough water to dissolve it and bring to a boil.

  2. Gently drop the tomatoes into the boiling syrup.

  3. Add any unground spices you like and boil for 30 minutes.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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 softens and becomes the body of the preserve.
Granulated white sugar
Sweetens the preserve and builds a syrup that firms and preserves the fruit.
Lime water
Firms the tomato flesh so it holds its shape during long boiling.

The step that matters

Dropping the tomatoes into the boiling syrup. Adding the tomatoes gently to already boiling syrup helps them keep their shape. Rough handling or stirring can break the skins and flesh, and the fruit may then fall apart rather than stay whole.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, mace, clove. 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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