Name: Stuffed Tomatoes
Ingredients: 1 minced onion; coarse sea salt; black pepper; fine bread crumbs; 2 tablespoons butter; 3 tablespoons minced veal or chicken; parsley

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tomatoes

Cut a slice from the stem end of each tomato and scoop out the pulp.

Make the filling

Sauté the minced onion in butter until soft.
Add the tomato pulp, meat, bread crumbs, parsley, salt, and pepper to the onion and mix well.
Fill the hollowed tomatoes with the mixture.

Bake

Cover the opening with bread crumbs, add a piece of butter on top, and bake at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes (in the method): Hollowed shells that hold the filling and soften as they bake.
Minced veal or chicken: Adds savory body and richness to the filling as it cooks.
Fine bread crumbs: Absorb the tomato juices and bind the filling, then brown on top.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, and helps the top crust brown in the oven.
Minced onion: Adds savory sweetness and aroma when softened in butter.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. Baking at 400°F drives off moisture and browns the bread crumb topping; underbaking leaves the filling wet and the top pale.

Swap the onion

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

Carrotfits better
Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread, butter, veal, parsley. 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.