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Stewed Tomatoes

Stewed tomatoes are cooked with salt, pepper, sugar, bread crumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes and peel them.

  2. Cut the tomatoes into quarters and place them in a saucepan.

Cook and thicken

  1. Cook the tomatoes on the fire until soft.

  2. Pound the tomatoes through a colander back into the saucepan.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Add fresh bread crumbs to thicken.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and a little sugar.

  6. Let simmer for twenty minutes.

  7. Before serving, add a piece of butter.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and liquid of the dish as they cook down.
Fresh bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the stewed tomatoes as they simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded finish to the sauce.
Sugar
Balances the tomatoes' acidity with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the bread crumbs. Bread crumbs thicken by absorbing liquid, so they should be added once the tomatoes are cooked and mashed. Adding them too early or in too large an amount can make the stew pasty, while adding too few leaves it thin and watery.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, sugar, bread, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, bread, butter. 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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