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Beef with Tomatoes

Beef with tomatoes is a dish of broiled beef served with a tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Beef with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Broil the beef until cooked to your liking.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, boil the tomatoes with cloves, butter, pepper, and salt until tender.

  2. Strain the tomato mixture through a colander to remove solids.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the beef and serve hot or cold.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh plate beef
Provides the main protein, which the broiling cooks through to the cook's preferred doneness.
Tomatoes
Cooked down until tender to form the body and tangy flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the tomato sauce, giving it a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Strain the tomato mixture through a colander to remove solids.. Straining removes the tomato skins and seeds, leaving a smooth sauce; if the tomatoes are not fully tender first, they will not pass cleanly and the sauce stays coarse.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, butter, 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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