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Tomato Stew

A stew of meat simmered with tomatoes, seasoned with pepper and salt, finished with a butter‑flour roux and served over toast.

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 ↓

Tomato Stew

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the meat in a saucepan with the tomatoes.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then cover tightly.

  3. Cook until the tomatoes are soft.

  4. Mix the butter with the flour, then add to the saucepan.

  5. Stew until the meat is tender.

  6. Serve over dry toast.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Meat + tomatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,438 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Meat for stewing
Provides the main substance, becoming tender during the long, slow stew.
Tomatoes
Supply moisture and acidity that break down to form the stew's sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smoother, heavier sauce when mixed with butter.

The step that matters

Stew until the meat is tender. Meat for stewing is full of connective tissue that needs a long, gentle, moist cook to soften. Rushing it or boiling hard leaves the meat tough and dry.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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