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Stewed Tomatoes

A tomato stew simmered with pepper, salt, butter, and stale bread, optionally with raw rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald and skin the desired number of tomatoes.

Cook and serve

  1. Place them in a saucepan without water and let them simmer for 30 minutes.

  2. Add pepper, coarse sea salt, and a good-sized piece of butter.

  3. Grate stale bread over the mixture.

  4. Boil once and serve very hot.

  5. For variation, add 2 tablespoons of raw rice for every quart of tomatoes when cooking.

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 + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 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
Break down and release their juice, which becomes the stewing liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished stew.
Stale bread
Dry bread soaks up liquid and thickens the tomatoes into a spoonable texture.

The step that matters

Simmering without water. Tomatoes cooked without added water can scorch on the bottom of the pan, so the heat should stay gentle and the pan should be watched. As they cook, the tomatoes release their own juice, which keeps the mixture moist.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, bread, rice. 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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