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Stuffed Tomatoes

Stuffed tomatoes filled with a buttery mushroom and almond biscuit mixture, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. 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 the tomatoes

  1. Cut off the tops of the tomatoes, leaving a hole the size of a threepenny bit.

  2. Squeeze out the juice and seeds from the tomatoes.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the tomato juice, chopped onion, parsley, mixed herbs, and mushrooms or cheese.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan.

  3. Fry the mixture until fragrant.

  4. Add enough almond biscuit crumbs to create a moist paste.

Fill, bake and serve

  1. Fill the tomatoes with the mixture, shaping them back to their original form.

  2. Top each tomato with a few crumbs and a small piece of butter.

  3. Place the filled tomatoes in a baking dish.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until tender, moistening with a little oil or butter.

  5. Serve on a dish with fried parsley around.

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. Almond + biscuittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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
Serve as the hollow shell that holds the filling while baking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and brushes the tomatoes as they bake.
Almond biscuit crumbs
Bind the filling into a moist paste that holds its shape.
Mushrooms or parmesan cheese
Add savoury depth and body to the filling.

The step that matters

Fry the filling until fragrant. Frying the chopped onion and herbs in butter softens the onion and drives off raw, harsh notes, so the filling tastes mellow rather than raw once baked.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, butter, onion, parsley, mushroom, biscuit, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, onion, parsley, mushroom, biscuit, pepper. 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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