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Ripe Tomato Preserves

A preserve made from ripe tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Ripe Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, combine sugar, vinegar, and spices to make a syrup.

  2. Add the tomatoes to the syrup and boil.

  3. Remove the tomatoes when they are done cooking.

  4. Continue boiling the syrup until it thickens to your desired consistency.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 main body and fruity flavor of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens the syrup as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavor.
Whole allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Whole cloves
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Stick cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aromatic flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Continue boiling the syrup until it thickens. Sugar concentrates as water evaporates, and the syrup thickens as it reaches the desired consistency. Stopping too early leaves a thin preserve, while boiling too long can make it overly stiff or scorch the sugar.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, allspice, clove, cinnamon. 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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