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Stewed Tomatoes

A slow‑cooked tomato dish with onion, butter, pepper, salt, and optional sugar and stale bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the tomatoes and pour boiling water over them.

  2. Let stand for 5 minutes.

  3. Slip off the skins.

  4. Cut off the stem end and divide the tomatoes into halves or quarters.

  5. Place them in a china-lined kettle.

Cook and season

  1. Set the kettle on the fire uncovered and cook for about 1 hour.

  2. Ladle out the juice.

  3. Set it aside for soup.

  4. Drain off any excess juice.

  5. Add a lump of butter, pepper, salt, and a pinch of sugar if needed.

  6. Serve.

Thicken

  1. Add stale bread crumbs and cook for an additional hour to thicken.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and release the juice that becomes the stewed sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of very acidic tomatoes.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb liquid as they cook, thickening the stewed tomatoes.

The step that matters

Adding the bread crumbs and cooking the extra hour. Stale bread absorbs liquid and its starch swells as it simmers, which thickens the sauce. The crumbs need the full hour to soften and blend in, so stopping early leaves the stew thin and grainy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, pepper, sugar, 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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