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Dessert

Tomato Preserve

A sweet tomato preserve made with tomatoes, sugar, lemon juice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Tomato Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald the tomatoes in boiling water and remove the skin.

  2. Cut the tomatoes in halves and press out the juice with your hands.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the sugar, salt, and the juice and meat of the lemons to the tomato juice.

  2. Cook quickly until thick with sugar.

  3. Pour into sterilized jars, fill the jars fully, and seal.

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. Tomato + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,438 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  4. Lemon + meattop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. 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

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the preserve as they cook down and thicken.
Sugar
Thickens the mixture and sweetens it, helping it keep as a preserve.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour and supports setting and keeping.

The step that matters

Cook quickly until thick with sugar. Sugar and acid concentrate as water evaporates, and prolonged cooking can darken and flatten fresh tomato flavour. A fast boil reduces the mixture to a thick preserve while keeping it bright.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, meat. 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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