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Stewed Tomatoes

A sweet tomato stew made with tomatoes, brown sugar, butter, breadcrumbs, salt, and pepper, topped with powdered 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. Peel and chop the tomatoes until you have a quart.

Stew and serve

  1. In a pot, combine the tomatoes, brown sugar, butter, bread crumbs, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stew the mixture until it is free from lumps and perfectly done.

  3. Pour into a deep dish and sift powdered crackers over the top.

  4. Serve warm.

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

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

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 the dish is stewed in.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the acidity of the tomatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the stew a smoother mouthfeel.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the stewed mixture as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stewing until free from lumps. Bread crumbs can clump if they are not fully combined and cooked through with the liquid. Stirring and simmering until evenly moistened gives a smooth texture rather than dry pockets.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, bread, 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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