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Cold Roast Warmed with Tomatoes

Sliced cold roast meat simmered in buttered onion, tomato sauce, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Roast Warmed with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the chopped onion in butter until it begins to brown.

  2. Add the mashed tomatoes and water, then stir in the sliced cold meat.

  3. Season with salt, black pepper, and red pepper.

  4. If necessary, thicken the gravy before serving.

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

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 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

Onion
Browning in butter builds a sweet, savoury base for the gravy.
Butter
Fat that carries the onion's flavour and helps it brown.
Canned tomatoes
Provide acidity, moisture and body to the gravy around the meat.
Cold meat
Main protein, which warms through in the simmering tomato gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy only if needed. Tomatoes and water give a thin sauce, and adding starch before the meat has warmed through can leave the gravy pasty or lumpy. Thicken gently at the end so the gravy coats the meat without becoming gluey.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, meat, pepper. 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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