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Dessert

Tomato Preserves

Tomato preserves made by boiling tomatoes with sugar, water, ginger, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tomato Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald and skin the tomatoes, then let them drain well.

  2. Measure the same weight of sugar as the tomatoes.

Make the syrup

  1. Add 1 pint of water for each pound of sugar to a pot and make a thick syrup.

  2. Before boiling, mix in 1 ounce of crushed ginger for every 3 pounds of sugar.

Cook and jar

  1. Once the syrup is ready, add the tomatoes and boil until it becomes a rich preserve.

  2. A little before the preserves are done, add 2 sliced lemons for every 3 pounds of preserves.

  3. Transfer the preserves into small self-sealing jars.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Pear + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Firm tomatoes
Form the bulk of the preserve and supply its main flavor and body as they cook down.
Sugar
Thickens the syrup and preserves the tomatoes while adding sweetness.
Race ginger
Adds a warm, sharp aroma that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Lemons
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Boiling the tomatoes until a rich preserve forms. Sugar concentrates as water evaporates, and this is what thickens the preserve and keeps it stable. Stopping too early leaves it runny and prone to spoiling, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and make it bitter or cause it to set too hard.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, ginger, 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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