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Tomato Tavasi

A baked dish of tomatoes stuffed with seasoned raw meat, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,594 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Tomato Tavasi

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

  1. Make 3 incisions across the top of each tomato with a sharp knife.

  2. Stuff each incision with 1 tablespoon of chopped and seasoned raw meat.

Bake and serve

  1. Arrange the tomatoes in a square baking dish to prevent them from falling apart.

  2. Place pieces of butter on top of each tomato and add a little water.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour and serve hot.

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. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Tomato + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,438 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Hold the stuffing and, as they cook, soften and release juices that moisten the dish.
Raw lean meat
Forms the savory filling that cooks through inside each tomato incision.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the tomatoes and helps the tops brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Arrange the tomatoes in a square baking dish. Snug placement keeps the tomatoes upright and stops them from splitting or collapsing as they soften in the oven, so the stuffing stays inside.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter. 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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