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Stuffed Tomato

A tomato filled with butter, salt, pepper, sweet herbs, and stale bread crumbs, baked until soft.

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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tomato

  1. Remove the top of the tomato.

  2. Scoop out most of the soft inside.

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter.

  2. Mix in the salt, pepper, sweet herbs, and bread crumbs.

  3. Fill the tomato with the mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 30 minutes, or until the tomato is soft and the crumbs are brown.

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 + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomato
Forms the vessel and, once baked, becomes soft and juicy around the filling.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and form the body of the filling, browning on top in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the crumbs and helps them brown.

The step that matters

Bake until the tomato is soft and the crumbs are brown. Baking too briefly leaves the tomato firm and the crumbs pale. The tomato needs time to soften and release moisture, and the crumbs need dry heat to brown properly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

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