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Stewed Tomatoes

A tomato stew cooked with salt, pepper, butter, sugar, and bread crumbs, optionally with raw rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scald the tomatoes, slice them, and place in a stewpan without water.

  2. Boil slowly for 30 minutes.

  3. Add salt, pepper, butter, sugar, and bread crumbs, then boil once more and serve hot.

  4. For a variation, add 2 tablespoons of raw rice to 1 quart of tomatoes at the start.

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 + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 as they break down during slow boiling.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the tomato liquid so the dish becomes more substantial.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder, smoother mouthfeel to the finished dish.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 30 minutes. Tomatoes cooked too hard or too fast can scorch on the bottom of the pan before they soften. A gentle simmer breaks them down evenly and concentrates their flavour.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, sugar, bread, rice. 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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