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Dessert

Tomato Preserves

A sweetened tomato preserve made with sugar, lemons, and optional ginger or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger 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 the tomatoes

  1. Wash and wipe the yellow pear tomatoes.

  2. Plunge them into boiling water and let stand until the skins can be easily removed.

  3. Layer the tomatoes and an equal measure of sugar in a jar or kettle and let stand overnight.

Make the preserves

  1. Pour off the syrup, heat it, and boil until quite thick; skim off any foam.

  2. Add the tomatoes and three sliced lemons for each pound of fruit.

  3. Cook until the tomatoes are almost transparent.

Jar

  1. Pour into sterilized jars and adjust the rubbers and covers.

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. Lemon + gingertop 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

Yellow pear tomatoes
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and translucent as it cooks in the syrup.
Sugar
Draws moisture out of the tomatoes and thickens the syrup, adding sweetness and preserving the fruit.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour and helps the preserve set.

The step that matters

Cook until the tomatoes are almost transparent. Sugar must be fully dissolved and the syrup thick before the fruit is added, and the tomatoes should be cooked gently until clear. Under-cooking leaves the fruit opaque and the syrup thin, while over-cooking toughens the skins and can cause the sugar to crystallise.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, tomato, sugar, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Corianderfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, tomato, 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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