Name: Stewed Tomatoes
Ingredients: 20 tomatoes, peeled and sliced; Salt, to taste; Pepper, to taste; 1 teaspoon sugar; 2 tablespoons butter, rolled in flour; 1 tablespoon fine bread crumbs

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

Peel and slice the tomatoes.

Stew

Stew the tomatoes for 20 minutes.
Season with salt, pepper, and sugar.
Add the butter rolled in flour.
Stir in the bread crumbs.
Simmer for an additional 10 minutes.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes: Form the main body of the dish and release juices that become the sauce.
Butter rolled in flour: Enriches the liquid and thickens it slightly as it cooks.
Bread crumbs: Soak up liquid and help thicken the stewed tomatoes.

Swap the tomato

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

Capsicumfits better
Shallotfits better
Leekfits better
Tomatothe original

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