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Ripe Tomato Preserve

A preserve made from peeled yellow tomatoes, sugar, and lemon juice, cooked and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ripe Tomato Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the tomatoes

  1. Combine tomatoes, sugar, and lemon juice in a bowl.

  2. Let stand overnight.

  3. Drain the syrup.

Cook the preserve

  1. Boil the syrup, skimming off any foam.

  2. Add the tomatoes to the boiling syrup.

  3. Cook gently for 20 minutes.

  4. Remove the tomatoes with a skimmer.

  5. Spread them on dishes.

  6. Boil the syrup until it thickens.

  7. Add the lemon juice just before removing from heat.

Jar and seal

  1. Place the fruit into jars.

  2. Fill with hot syrup.

  3. Seal when cool.

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 + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Tomato + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Round yellow tomatoes
Provide the fruit that softens and becomes the body of the preserve.
Sugar
Draws out moisture and, as it thickens, sets the syrup and preserves the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps the preserve keep its color and set.

The step that matters

Cook the tomatoes gently. Boiling vigorously breaks the tomatoes apart and can toughen or shred them. Gentle simmering keeps the pieces whole while sugar slowly penetrates the fruit and the syrup thickens.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. 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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