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Stuffed Tomatoes Baked

A baked dish of tomatoes filled with a mixture of cooked meats, bread crumbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Stuffed Tomatoes Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. Scoop out a small piece from the top of each tomato.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the cooked meat finely and fry in butter until just colored.

  2. Add the chopped meat, a little chopped pork, bread crumbs, and soup stock to the pan.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and parsley, and mix well until hot.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolk to bind the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the tomatoes with the mixture and bake until heated through.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Beef + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Beef + lambtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + chickentop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Large tomatoes
Hold the filling and soften into tender, juicy shells as they bake.
Cooked beef
Provides the main savory meat flavor and body of the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browns the meat lightly for flavor.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and give the filling a softer, less dense texture.
Raw egg yolk
Binds the filling together so it holds its shape when spooned in.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk off the heat. The yolk is a binder that thickens when heated. Adding it over high heat can scramble it into lumps, so removing the pan from the heat first keeps the filling smooth and cohesive.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, lamb, veal, chicken, butter, pork, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, lamb, veal, chicken, butter, pork, 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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