Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberry Tomato Preserve

A tomato preserve flavored with lemon rind, pulp, ginger, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Strawberry Tomato Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavored water

  1. Cook the lemon rind, seeded pulp, and ginger root in boiling water until well flavored.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Make the preserve

  1. Combine ½ pound of sugar and 1 cup of the flavored water with each pound of tomatoes in a pot.

  2. Heat to boiling and skim off any foam.

  3. Add the tomatoes.

  4. Cook until thoroughly scalded.

  5. Skim the tomatoes into jars.

  6. Boil the syrup until thick, adding a few slices of non-bitter lemon.

  7. Fill the jars with syrup to overflowing.

  8. Cover the jars securely.

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. Ginger + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,887 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

  4. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 its fruity body as they cook down.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens the syrup as it boils down.
Lemon rind and pulp
Contribute acidity and bright citrus aroma to the flavored water.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Sugar and tomato must reach a concentrated syrup before jarring. Too little boiling leaves a thin preserve that may spoil, while overcooking can make it stiff and dark.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, ginger, 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.

More tomato preserve recipes

Green 9Yellow 5 See all 30 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes