Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Baked Tomatoes

A baked dish of tomatoes filled with breadcrumb, cheese, parsley, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Stuffed Baked Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cut the tops off the tomatoes and scoop out the insides.

Stuff and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix breadcrumbs, cheese, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the hollowed tomatoes.

  3. Drizzle olive oil over the stuffed tomatoes.

  4. Place in a baking dish and bake for 25-30 minutes until golden.

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 + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Hold the filling and soften as they bake, becoming tender and juicy.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and form the bulk of the stuffing, giving it body.
Grated cheese
Melts and binds the filling while browning on the surface.
Olive oil
Adds fat that helps the top brown and gives a richer flavor.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cheese, pepper, olive):

  1. Basilfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cheese, pepper, olive. 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.

You might also like