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Stuffed Tomatoes

A baked dish of tomatoes filled with a mixture of meat, bread crumbs, stock, and optional vegetables, served with toast or brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,719 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Stuffed 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.

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. Mix the chopped meat with buttered bread crumbs, stock, seasoning, and optional onion or peppers.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the tomatoes.

  3. Place the stuffed tomatoes in a granite pan with a little stock or hot water.

  4. Bake until heated through.

Serve

  1. Serve on slices of toast or with brown sauce.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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 into a juicy, tender shell as they bake.
Buttered bread crumbs
Absorb juices and add fat and body, keeping the stuffing from becoming watery.
Chopped meat
Provides the main filling, adding savoury flavour and substance to the stuffing.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, bread, sauce, meat, pepper, mushroom, cream):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, bread, sauce, meat, pepper, mushroom, cream. 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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