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Currted Tomatoes

A baked dish of tomatoes seasoned with curry, rice, breadcrumbs, and butter.

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 ↓

Currted Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix curry powder with canned tomatoes and salt to taste.

  2. In a buttered baking dish, layer the mixture with raw rice, ending with tomatoes.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and dot with bits of butter.

  2. Bake for 1 hour or longer.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 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

Raw rice
Absorbs liquid from the tomatoes as it bakes, becoming tender and giving the dish body.
Canned tomatoes
Provide the moisture and acidity that cook the rice and form the sauce.
Curry powder
Adds the warm, aromatic spice flavor that defines the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread crumbs brown on top.
Bread crumbs
Form a golden, crisp topping as the dish bakes.

The step that matters

Bake for 1 hour or longer. Rice must fully absorb the tomato liquid and cook through. Stopping too early leaves it firm, while baking long enough lets the starch soften and the sauce thicken.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, bread, 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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