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Stewed Tomatoes

Stewed tomatoes simmered with butter, pepper, salt, and optional sugar, thickened with bread crumbs or crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes to peel them easily.

  2. Cut the tomatoes, discarding unripe and hard parts.

Stew

  1. Place the tomatoes in a pot and season with butter, pepper, salt, and sugar if needed.

  2. Cover and stew gently for 45 minutes, stirring frequently.

  3. For added flavor, cook minced onion with the tomatoes or fry it first.

Thicken

  1. Thicken the stew with bread crumbs or rolled crackers.

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. Butter + breadtop 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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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, juice and tomato flavor of the stew.
Bread crumbs or rolled crackers
Absorb liquid and thicken the stew as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, savory mouthfeel to the stewed tomatoes.

The step that matters

Thickening with bread crumbs or crackers. Crumbs added too early or in too large an amount can turn the stew pasty, while adding them too late leaves it watery. Starch from the crumbs swells as it absorbs liquid, so they should be stirred in gradually and given a few minutes to hydrate before judging the consistency.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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