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Sautéed tomatoes with butter, vinegar, tarragon, salt, and saccharin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and tarragon work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 391 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the sliced tomatoes in butter until browned.

  2. Add white vinegar, tarragon, coarse sea salt, and saccharin.

  3. Simmer for 20 minutes.

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 + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Butter + tarragontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,572 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 moisture, softening as they cook and releasing juices into the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for frying and promotes browning on the tomato surfaces.
White vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the tomatoes' sweetness.
Saccharin
Provides sweetness without sugar, balancing the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Browning the tomatoes in butter. Browning depends on direct contact with hot fat and the surface sugars and proteins reacting. If the heat is too high, the butter can burn before the tomatoes brown, leaving a bitter taste. Moderate heat lets the surfaces colour evenly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vinegar, tarragon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, tarragon. 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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