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Stewed Tomatoes

A tomato stew flavored with pepper, salt, butter, breadcrumbs, sugar, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Stewed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel and cut the tomatoes into small pieces.

  2. Stew the tomatoes until tender.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, butter, bread crumbs, sugar, and a little flour mixed with cold cream.

  4. Add the cream and stir well.

  5. For extra flavor, add chopped onion.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, 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 liquid that softens into a stewed sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the stewed tomatoes.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the stewed tomatoes and soak up excess liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so the sauce becomes smooth and less watery.
Cream
Adds richness and a mellow body that softens the tomato acidity.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with cold cream before adding it. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Blending it first into cold cream lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, butter, bread, sugar, flour, cream):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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