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Tomato Preserve
1 lb yellow pear tomatoes 1 lb. sugar 2 ozs. preserved Canton ginger 2 lemons Wipe tomatoes, cover with boiling water, and let stand until skins may be easily removed. Add sugar, cover, and let stand over night. In the morning pour off syrup and boil until quite thick; skim, then add tomatoes, ginger, and lemons which have been sliced and the seeds removed. Cook until tomatoes have a clarified appearance.
A small-batch sweet preserve of the kind that once filled the space between jam and condiment. Weights are given by the pound, so a kitchen scale does more for this recipe than any measuring cup.
- The tomatoesYellow pear tomatoes are still grown and sold at farmers' markets in late summer; small yellow cherry or grape tomatoes substitute directly. Choose firm, unsplit fruit, since anything soft will collapse instead of clarifying.
- Preserved Canton gingerThis was ginger root candied in heavy syrup, sold in stoneware jars from Canton (Guangzhou). Modern crystallised or stem ginger in syrup fills the role; 2 oz is about a third of a cup, chopped or sliced thin.
- Equal weight sugarA pound of sugar to a pound of fruit is the classic preserving ratio and is what makes the finished product keep and take on gloss. Do not reduce it; less sugar gives a loose, quick-souring sauce rather than a preserve.
- The overnight standSugar draws juice from the peeled tomatoes so the syrup can be concentrated on its own, before the fruit is exposed to long boiling. This is why the tomatoes stay whole and translucent instead of turning to pulp.
- "Boil until quite thick"Reduce the syrup until it thickens noticeably and sheets slowly from a spoon; around 220F (104C) is the usual guide for a thickened preserving syrup, though the recipe gives no temperature and the syrup is cooked again with the fruit afterwards. A syrup left too thin makes it harder for the fruit to clarify in the second cooking.
- The lemonsThey go in sliced with the peel on, which supplies both pectin and acid. Slice them thin and remove the seeds as directed, since seeds can add bitterness.
- Judging "clarified"The tomatoes should look glassy and translucent, with no opaque centre; the recipe gives no time, but a gentle cooking of roughly half an hour or so is a reasonable expectation. Stir rarely and lift the pan off the heat if the syrup starts to darken at the edges.
- Yield and keepingAbout 1 to 1 1/2 pints. The original gives no sealing instructions: refrigerate and use within a few weeks, or follow current tested guidance for water-bath processing if you want it shelf-stable.
Sweet tomato preserves appear regularly in American cookery from the earlier nineteenth century onward, a period when the tomato was still handled as often like a fruit as a vegetable. Small yellow pear and cherry varieties, seedy and thin-fleshed, were among those put to preserves, pickles and "tomato figs." The Canton ginger reflects another habit of the period: jars of Chinese preserved ginger came in through the China trade and turn up as a flourish in American preserving recipes, adding warmth to a mild fruit. A preserve like this might have been served with cold meat, spooned over a plain pudding, or eaten from a small dish at tea.