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Tomato Poiree

A smooth tomato purée made with butter, sugar, and corn starch, served hot or cold with meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Tomato Poiree

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scald the quartered tomatoes in boiling water.

  2. Add the butter, salt, pepper, and sugar.

  3. Boil until the tomatoes are soft.

  4. Strain the mixture and thicken with corn starch.

  5. Serve hot or cold as an accompaniment to meat.

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. Tomato + peppertop 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and flavour of the purée once softened and strained.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the purée.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.
Corn starch
Thickens the strained purée to a smoother, more spoonable consistency.

The step that matters

Thickening with corn starch. Corn starch must be heated to swell and thicken; if added to a liquid that is not hot enough or not stirred well, it can stay grainy or clump. Keep the purée at a steady simmer while stirring.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, 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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