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Stuffed Tomatoes

Stuffed tomatoes with bread crumbs or rice, onion, butter, salt, pepper, and optional sugar, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Stuffed Tomatoes

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cut off the tops of the tomatoes and scoop out the seeds.

  3. Cook the tomatoes with their juice for 20 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. Add the bread crumbs or rice and chopped onion; stew for 10 more minutes.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, butter, and sugar if desired.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the tomatoes with the mixture, replace the tops, and dust with bread crumbs.

  2. Season the tops as you did the filling and bake 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Hold the filling while cooking down into a soft, juicy base.
Bread crumbs or rice
Absorb the tomato juices and give the filling body and a tender bite.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the filling feel smooth.

The step that matters

Cook the tomatoes with their juice for 20 minutes. Cooking drives off excess water so the filling does not turn soggy or watery. Tomatoes that are too wet can dilute the crumbs or rice and make the stuffed shells collapse.

Swap the onion

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

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

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