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Stewed Tomatos

A tomato stew made with butter, pepper, salt, sugar, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Tomatos

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes to remove the skin.

  2. Slice the tomatoes and stew them for at least 30 minutes.

Season and thicken

  1. Add butter, pepper, coarse sea salt, and sugar to taste.

  2. Crumble bread and stir it in to thicken the stew.

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

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

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 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

Tomatoes
Form the body of the stew and release their juices as they cook down.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished stew.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes and rounds out their flavor.
Bread
Absorbs liquid and swells, thickening the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring in the bread. Bread thickens the stew by absorbing liquid as it softens. Adding it too early or too much can make the stew gluey or pasty, so add it gradually near the end and stir until it reaches the desired thickness.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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