Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Tomatas

A tomato dish stewed in gravy, thickened with arrowroot or flour, finished with butter and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Tomatas

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Arrange the tomatoes in a single layer.

  2. Pour enough gravy to reach half their height.

  3. Stew gently until the undersides are done, then turn and finish stewing.

  4. Thicken the gravy with arrowroot and cream or with flour and butter.

  5. Serve the thickened gravy around the 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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Arrowroot + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tomato + arrowroottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 juicy flavor of the dish.
Arrowroot or flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the tomatoes instead of running thin.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the thickened gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the undersides are done, then turn and finish stewing.. Gentle heat lets the tomatoes soften and cook through without breaking apart. Turning them once lets both sides cook evenly, so the tomatoes hold their shape when served.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, pepper, 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.

More stewed tomatoes recipes

with Onion 3 See all 189 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesArrowroot GruelArrowroot Gruel37 recipes