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Canned Tomatoes, Stewed

A simple stewed tomato dish flavored with butter, sugar, salt, pepper, and thickened with corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and tomato 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 ↓

Canned Tomatoes, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine canned tomatoes with salt and pepper.

  2. Add butter and sugar, stirring to combine.

  3. Mix cornstarch with cold water, then stir into the tomatoes.

  4. Bring to a boil and cook for a moment.

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. Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  4. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned tomatoes
Provides the main body, acidity and flavor of the stew.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tomatoes' acidity.
Corn starch
Thickens the tomato liquid into a sauce as it heats.

The step that matters

Bring the cornstarch mixture to a full boil. Cornstarch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil, when its starch granules swell and gelatinize. Stirring it in and stopping before the boil leaves the liquid thin and cloudy, and the starch can clump if it is not stirred in evenly first.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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