Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Tomatoes

A tomato stew with sugar, cream, butter, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Make the tomato base

  1. In a saucepan, combine the tomatoes and sugar.

  2. Cook over medium heat until heated through.

  3. Stir in the rich cream and butter until melted.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture over small squares of toasted bread.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main liquid, body and tangy acidity of the dish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the tomatoes.
Butter
Contributes fat for a silky mouthfeel and rounder flavour.
Toasted bread
Gives a crisp-edged base that soaks up the sauce and adds texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream and butter. Cream is a dairy liquid whose proteins can curdle or separate when held at a hard boil in an acidic tomato base. Keep the heat moderate once the cream goes in so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, butter, egg, bread. 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.

More stewed tomatoes recipes

with Onion 3 See all 189 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes