Skip to main content
Main

Tomatoes Stuffed with Chicken Livers

Tomatoes are hollowed and filled with a mixture of boiled chicken livers, bread crumbs, and seasonings, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Mary Elizabeth Lyles Wilson (1860–1924) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and chicken match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,027 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut off the tops of the tomatoes.

  2. Remove the insides with a spoon and chop the bread crumbs and boiled chicken livers.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the chopped mixture with salt, pepper, grated onion, minced parsley, cayenne pepper, butter, and nutmeg.

  2. Fry the mixture in olive oil.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the tomato shells with the fried mixture.

  2. Dust the stuffed tomatoes with bread crumbs.

  3. Bake for ten minutes.

By Mary Elizabeth Lyles Wilson (1860–1924). 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Tomato + chickentop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,027 recipes

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

  2. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,164 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,145 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + creamtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,494 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Olive + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,796 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken livers
Provide the rich, savory meat base of the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Bind the filling and add body, and form a crisp topping when baked.
Tomatoes
Serve as the edible shells that hold and steam the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling and aids browning.

The step that matters

Frying the filling in olive oil. Frying drives off excess moisture from the chopped livers and crumbs, so the stuffing holds its shape and does not make the tomato shells soggy.

Flavor stand-ins for the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, olive, sauce, butter, cream, tomato, chicken):

  1. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  2. Celerybetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, olive, sauce, butter, cream, tomato, chicken. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Illustration of Tomato SoupIllustrationTomato Soup526 recipesIllustration of Brown BreadIllustrationBrown Bread461 recipesIllustration of Chicken BrothIllustrationChicken Broth257 recipesIllustration of Corn FrittersIllustrationCorn Fritters203 recipes