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Tomatoes Stuffed with Rice

Tomatoes filled with seasoned rice, baked at 350°F for 30 minutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Tomatoes Stuffed with Rice

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. Do not skin the tomatoes. Cut a thin slice from the stem end and scoop out the inside, leaving a shell ½ inch thick.

  2. Chop the scooped-out tomato and season it with pepper, coarse sea salt, melted butter, and a little sugar.

Fill and bake

  1. Add an equal amount of cooked rice to the seasoned tomato mixture.

  2. Fill the tomato shells with the rice mixture and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 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

Large, smooth tomatoes
Form the edible shell that holds the filling while it bakes.
Cooked rice
Bulks out the filling and absorbs the juices and butter as it bakes.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the chopped tomato filling.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomato.

The step that matters

Leave the tomato shell intact. Cutting the shell too thin or too deep can puncture it, so it may collapse or leak while baking. Keeping a shell about ½ inch thick gives the tomato enough structure to hold the rice filling in its shape.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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