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Tomato Preserves

A sweet tomato preserve made with sugar, tomatoes, lemon, allspice, cloves, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine 1 pound of sugar with 1 peck of tomatoes in a large pot.

  2. Add 2 sliced lemons, 2 tablespoons of allspice, 2 tablespoons of cloves, and 2 tablespoons of ginger.

  3. Cook over medium heat until the mixture thickens.

  4. Pour into sterilized jars and seal.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the preserves and helps thicken them as it cooks down.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body and bulk of the preserves.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour and supports setting.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat until the mixture thickens. Sugar and fruit thicken as water evaporates and pectin and sugar concentrate. Cooking too briefly leaves the preserves runny, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and make them too stiff.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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