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Stewed Tomatoes

A tomato dish simmered with onion, butter, seasoning, and optional thickener or sweetener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Plunge the tomatoes into boiling water to remove the skins.

  2. Drain and peel the tomatoes, then cut them into small pieces.

Cook

  1. Add the chopped onion and cook over moderate heat for a long time to improve the flavor.

  2. Add a pinch of baking soda.

  3. Add butter and seasoning.

Finish

  1. Optionally, thicken with cracker crumbs or bread crumbs.

  2. Optionally, sweeten with sugar.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the body of the dish and supply most of its liquid and acidity.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens during long cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and rounds out the flavor of the cooked tomatoes.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomatoes' acidity, mellowing the flavor and taste.
Cracker crumbs or bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the stewed tomatoes.

The step that matters

Cooking the onion over moderate heat for a long time. Slow cooking softens the onion and develops its sweetness and depth. Heat that is too high can scorch the sugars and leave a bitter taste, while too short a cook leaves the onion sharp and raw.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

More stewed tomatoes recipes

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