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Stuffed Tomatoes

A baked tomato dish filled with sausage and tomato mixture, topped with breadcrumbs and butter, served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 Tomatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Fry the sausage or sausage meat until cooked.

  2. Wash the tomatoes and cut a small slice from the stem end of each.

  3. Scoop out the interior of the tomatoes with a teaspoon and chop it finely.

  4. Mix the chopped tomato with the fried sausage, and season with salt and pepper.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the tomatoes with the sausage mixture.

  2. Place the stuffed tomatoes in a baking dish.

  3. Sprinkle the stuffed tomatoes with bread crumbs.

  4. Add a small piece of butter on top of each tomato.

  5. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

  6. Transfer the tomatoes to a hot platter without breaking them.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Place the baking dish over heat.

  2. Stir in the flour.

  3. Let the flour brown.

  4. Add boiling water to the browned flour.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Boil for 1 minute.

  7. Serve the gravy with the stuffed tomatoes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

Sausage meat
Provides the savoury, fatty filling that flavours the tomato interior.
Tomatoes
Serve as the edible shell and add moisture and acidity to the filling.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, lightly browned topping that helps hold the filling in place.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning on the topping and enriches the flavour.
Flour
Browns in the pan and thickens the boiling water into a gravy.

The step that matters

Let the flour brown. Cooking flour in the hot pan until golden removes raw starch taste and builds colour and nutty flavour before the water is added. Stirring prevents scorching.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, bread, 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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