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Stuffed Tomatoes

A tomato dish cooked with onion, butter, salt, pepper, sugar, and bread crumbs or flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Stuffed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes and remove the skins.

  2. Cut the tomatoes into pieces.

  3. Cook the tomato pieces slowly for 30 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the onion finely and fry it in butter.

  2. Add the fried onion to the tomatoes.

  3. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and sugar.

  4. Thicken with bread crumbs or flour dissolved in a little water, then cook for about 10 minutes longer.

Serve

  1. Serve very 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. 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
Cook down into the main body of the dish, providing moisture and a sweet-acid base.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma when fried in butter before joining the tomatoes.
Butter
Fat that softens the onion and carries its flavour into the sauce.
Bread crumbs or flour
Thickens the tomato mixture so it holds together rather than running thin.

The step that matters

Thicken with bread crumbs or flour dissolved in a little water. Starch must be fully dispersed in liquid before it goes in, or it clumps. Once added, it needs further simmering so the starch swells and thickens the sauce evenly.

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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