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 Preserve
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Peel the tomatoes by boiling them in water, then slice them thick and drain the juice.
Slice the lemons and boil them in water until tender, then drain.
Make and combine
In a pot, combine the sugar and water to make a syrup, boiling until thick.
Add the tomatoes and lemons to the syrup gradually, cooking until clear and rich.
Drain and jar
Place the mixture on a flat dish to drain, then transfer to jars and cover with syrup.
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.
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Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,592 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + tomatotop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Sugar
- Forms the syrup that sweetens the preserve and helps it keep its body.
- Firm tomatoes
- Provide the bulk of the preserve; firm fruit holds its shape through long simmering.
- Lemons
- Add acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavour.
The step that matters
Adding the fruit to the syrup gradually. Adding fruit in small portions keeps the syrup at a steady boil, so the fruit cooks through and absorbs sugar evenly instead of toughening or sinking into a cold, thin syrup.
Swap the tomato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon):
- Arrowrootfits better
- Sweet potatofits better
- Kalefits better
- 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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