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Dessert

Tomato Marmalade

A sweet and tangy preserve made from tomatoes, raisins, lemons, and sugar.

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 Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel the tomatoes and slice them.

  2. Slice the lemons thinly and remove the seeds.

  3. Remove the seeds from the raisins.

Cook and jar

  1. Layer the tomato slices, lemon slices, raisins, and sugar in a large pot.

  2. Heat slowly to boiling, then simmer until thick like mush.

  3. Pour into sterilized jars 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. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + raisintop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Lemon and sugar 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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the marmalade as they break down during cooking.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the finished preserve.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright flavour that balances the sugar.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it dissolves, helps thicken it into a spread.

The step that matters

Simmering until thick. Simmering slowly lets water evaporate and pectin and sugar concentrate, so the mixture sets as it cools. Stopping too early leaves it runny; cooking too hard or too long can scorch the sugar on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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