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Tomato Preserve

A preserve made by cooking tomatoes with vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate

  1. Combine tomatoes, vinegar, and sugar in a large container.

  2. Let sit for 5 days.

Cook and reduce

  1. Boil the mixture until the tomatoes are tender.

  2. Remove the tomatoes and continue boiling the liquid until it reduces to half its volume.

  3. Add cinnamon and allspice to the reduced liquid and stir well.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Tomato + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together670 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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 bulk of the preserve and break down during boiling to form its body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves, helps preserve the fruit and thicken the syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the tomatoes.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm aroma and flavor to the reduced syrup.
Allspice
Contributes warm, clove-like aroma and flavor to the reduced syrup.

The step that matters

Reducing the liquid to half its volume. Boiling off water concentrates the sugar and acid, thickening the syrup and helping preserve the fruit. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while over-reducing can scorch the sugar and make it too thick.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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