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Tomatoes Stewed in Butter

A simple stew of tomatoes cooked gently in butter with flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomatoes Stewed in Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter.

  2. Dredge the melted butter with 2 teaspoons of flour.

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Carefully pour in the tomatoes without displacing the butter.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then cover.

  3. Cook gently for 25 minutes without stirring.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tomato + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together879 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 liquid of the dish, softening as they cook gently.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the dish.
Flour
Thickens the juices into a light, smooth sauce as the butter is dredged.

The step that matters

Pour the tomatoes gently over the butter. Pouring carefully keeps the melted butter and flour layered rather than mixing them in, so the flour can thicken the juices evenly as the tomatoes cook. Stirring during the gentle cook can break the tomatoes down unevenly and cloud the sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg, flour, 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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