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Stuffed Tomatoes, Mackay Style

Stuffed tomatoes filled with a seasoned pork, veal, and marrow mixture, baked and served with lemon juice and tomato puree.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,149 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffed Tomatoes, Mackay Style

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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the tops of the tomatoes and scoop out the insides.

  2. In a bowl, mix the chopped pork, veal, marrow, salt, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, chives, garlic, and tarragon.

  3. Stuff the mixture into the prepared tomatoes.

Bake and serve

  1. Arrange the stuffed tomatoes in a buttered flat saucepan.

  2. Place a slice of fat pork on top of each tomato.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until cooked through.

  4. Drizzle lemon juice over the tomatoes before serving.

  5. Serve with reduced tomato puree or half glaze.

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. Chive + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Forms the savory body of the filling and sets firm when cooked through.
Veal
Adds tender texture and mild meaty body to the stuffing.
Marrow
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the filling from drying out in the oven.
Fat pork
Bastes the tomatoes with fat as it renders, adding moisture and browning on top.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. The raw meat filling must reach a fully cooked state inside the tomatoes. Thick or dense stuffing can stay pink at the centre while the tomato skin softens, so the filling needs to be checked rather than judged by the tomato alone.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pork, veal, pepper, parsley, chive, garlic):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pork, veal, pepper, parsley, chive, garlic. 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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