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Creamed Tomatoes

A tomato dish cooked with butter, cream, flour, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the tomatoes into thick slices.

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and fry the tomato slices until tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream or milk with the flour until smooth.

  2. Stir the cream mixture into the pan with the tomatoes.

  3. Cook while stirring constantly until the sauce thickens, then serve.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

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

  5. Flour + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 soft, tender texture of the dish.
Cream or rich milk
Supplies fat and richness, forming the creamy base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour for frying the tomato slices.

The step that matters

Stirring the cream mixture into the sauce. Flour mixed with cream can clump if added to hot liquid without first being blended smooth. Stir constantly while the sauce heats so the starch thickens evenly into a smooth sauce rather than lumps.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, butter, tomato. 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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