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Dessert

Tomato Figs

Preserved tomatoes sweetened with brown sugar, dried in the sun.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,667 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Tomato Figs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald the tomatoes and remove the skin.

  2. Weigh the peeled tomatoes.

Cook the tomatoes

  1. In a kettle, combine the tomatoes and brown sugar.

  2. Boil until the sugar is absorbed and the mixture is clarified.

Dry and pack

  1. Spread the mixture on dishes.

  2. Flatten the mixture.

  3. Dry in the sun, occasionally sprinkling small amounts of syrup over the drying tomatoes.

  4. Pack the dried tomatoes in boxes, layering them and sprinkling each layer with powdered sugar.

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 + 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

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the preserve, releasing moisture that becomes the syrup.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the dish and, through boiling, thickens and preserves the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Boil until the sugar is absorbed and the mixture is clarified. Sugar draws water out of the tomato pieces and, once concentrated enough, helps preserve them. Stopping too early leaves a wetter mixture that may spoil, while overcooking can make it hard and overly dense.

“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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