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Stewed Tomatoes

A tomato stew made by boiling, peeling, slicing, and simmering tomatoes with butter, salt, pepper, and optional ingredients.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Boil water and pour it over the tomatoes for a few moments.

  2. Peel the skins off the tomatoes and slice them.

  3. Place the sliced tomatoes in a well-lined saucepan.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the tomatoes for about 20 minutes.

  2. Add butter, salt, and pepper; stew for an additional 15 minutes.

  3. Optionally thicken with grated bread and add sugar.

  4. Optionally add chopped onion or green corn.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Form the main body of the dish and release juices that become the sauce as they stew.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded fat flavour to the stewed tomatoes.
Grated bread
Absorbs liquid from the stewing tomatoes, thickening the sauce to a looser stew texture.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, sugar, onion, bread, corn):

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

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