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Stewed Tomatoes I

A tomato stew with cream, bread, and butter, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 I

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Boil the tomatoes in water until cooked.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add cream and bring to a boil.

Assemble and serve

  1. Crumble the bread into a deep dish and add the butter.

  2. Pour the cooked tomatoes over the bread and serve hot.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 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
Provide the main body and liquid that softens the dish when cooked.
Bread
Soaks up the cooked tomato liquid, giving the dish a soft, thick texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the cooked tomatoes.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the bread and gives a rich, savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Bringing the cream to a boil. Dairy cream can separate, curdle or scorch when boiled hard or left on high heat. Bringing it to a boil gently while stirring keeps it smooth and prevents it from sticking to the pan.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lima beansfits better
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, cream, 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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