Name: Tomato Stew
Ingredients: nice ripe tomatoes; coarse sea salt; black pepper; grated rind of ½ lemon; bouquet of herbs (thyme, parsley, bay leaf); ½ cup water; 1 tablespoon butter

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Tomato Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

Plunge tomatoes into boiling water for a few seconds, then transfer to cold water for the same time.
Remove the skins from the tomatoes and cut them roughly in a bowl.

Cook

Add salt, pepper, lemon rind, herbs, water, and butter to the tomatoes. Mix well and transfer to a well-buttered pot.
Cook for 20 minutes.

Serve

Empty into a hot dish, remove the bouquet of herbs, and serve immediately.

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.

Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,973 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 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, juice and flavour of the stew.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Lemon rind: Adds bright, aromatic acidity that lifts the sweetness of the tomatoes.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, lemon, thyme, parsley, butter):

Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Parsnipfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon, thyme, parsley, butter. 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.