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Stewed Tomatoes

A dish of tomatoes simmered with butter, flour, sugar, salt, pepper, and onion juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the tomatoes.

  2. Place the tomatoes in a nickel‑steel‑plated or agate saucepan over medium heat.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew for 20 minutes.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the butter and flour to form a paste.

  3. Add the butter‑flour mixture, sugar, salt, pepper, and onion juice to the tomatoes.

  4. Stew for an additional 5 minutes and serve.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 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 juice that becomes the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the stewed tomatoes.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the tomato juices into a smoother, less watery sauce when mixed with butter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Adding the butter-flour paste. Flour mixed with butter into a paste disperses evenly when stirred into hot liquid. Added loose, flour clumps and stays floury, so the sauce thickens unevenly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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