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Stewed Tomatoes with Cream

A dish of stewed tomatoes simmered with butter, salt, sugar, pepper, bread crumbs, and cream.

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

Stewed Tomatoes with Cream

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the tomatoes.

Cook and serve

  1. In a hot saucepan, combine the tomatoes, butter, salt, sugar, and pepper.

  2. Simmer gently until ready to serve.

  3. Stir in the bread crumbs and cream, then serve immediately.

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. Butter + breadtop 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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 juice that form the stewed base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the stew a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the stewed tomatoes and soak up liquid to give body.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the acidity of the tomatoes for a mellow finish.
Sugar
Balances the tomatoes' acidity and adds gentle sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Tomatoes that boil hard can break down unevenly and scorch on the bottom of the pan. A gentle simmer keeps the texture cohesive and lets the flavors meld without sticking.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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