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Devilled Tomatoes

Deviled tomatoes are tomatoes cooked and served in a buttery, tangy sauce with mustard, vinegar, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Devilled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Cook the tomatoes until tender and keep them hot.

  2. In a saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter.

  3. Add onion juice, vinegar, sugar, mustard, salt, and cayenne to the butter.

  4. Mix all ingredients in a bowl and pour into the saucepan.

  5. Slowly add the beaten yolks of 2 eggs, stirring constantly.

Finish and serve

  1. Once combined, remove from heat and return the tomatoes to the sauce.

  2. 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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 recipes

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

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 soft texture that the sauce is served over.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the seasonings into a smooth sauce.
Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce as they are gently heated with stirring.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Yolks thicken when heated, but if added too fast or over too much heat they can scramble. Adding them slowly while stirring constantly lets them blend smoothly into the warm butter mixture.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, vinegar, sugar, mustard, egg):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, vinegar, sugar, mustard, egg. 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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