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A sautéed tomato dish flavored with butter, vinegar, chili sauce, tarragon, salt, and saccharin, simmered for 20 minutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Slice the tomatoes.

  2. Fry the slices in butter until browned.

  3. Add vinegar, chili, tarragon, salt, and saccharin.

  4. 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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 flavor of the sauce as they break down during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browns the tomato slices through frying.
White vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the sweetness of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Simmer for 20 minutes. Simmering slowly lets the liquid reduce and the flavors meld, so the sauce thickens without scorching. Too vigorous a boil can burn the bottom of the pan.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, sauce, 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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