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Baked Tomatoes Stuffed with Rice

Baked tomatoes filled with rice and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Baked Tomatoes Stuffed with Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Select 12 round tomatoes of the same size and remove a piece about 1 inch in diameter from the blossom end of each, then remove the seeds.

Make the rice filling

  1. Cook 1 cup of rice in 1 quart of well-seasoned broth with ½ green pepper until nearly tender.

  2. Add ½ cup of butter to the rice and mix thoroughly without breaking the grains.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the tomato shells with the rice, replace the tops, and place them stem end down in a baking pan.

  2. Brush the outside of the tomatoes with olive oil or melted butter.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes.

  4. Remove to a serving dish and pour 1 cup of highly-seasoned tomato sauce around them.

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 + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

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

  2. Rice + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Absorbs the broth and forms the bulk of the soft, tender filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the rice filling moist and flavorful.
Round tomatoes
Serve as the edible shells that hold the filling while baking.
Green pepper
Adds mild, fresh vegetable flavor to the rice as it cooks in the broth.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter into the rice without breaking the grains. Cooked rice grains that are broken release starch and turn gummy, so folding gently keeps the filling light and separate while it bakes inside the tomatoes.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, pepper, butter, olive, sauce. 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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