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Stewed Tomatoes

A tomato stew made by simmering tomatoes with water, bread crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Stewed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes.

  2. Peel the tomatoes.

  3. Cut the tomatoes into quarters.

  4. Place the tomatoes in a saucepan.

Cook and thicken

  1. Cook the tomatoes on the fire until soft.

  2. Pound the tomatoes through a colander back into the saucepan.

  3. Set the saucepan on the fire again.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Add fresh bread crumbs to thicken.

  6. Season with salt, pepper, and a little sugar.

  7. Let the mixture simmer for twenty minutes.

  8. Before serving, add a piece of butter.

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. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the main body of the dish and provide its juice and acidity.
Fresh bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the stewed tomatoes as they simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour at the end.
Sugar
Softens the tomatoes' sharp acidity with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture simmer after adding bread crumbs. Bread crumbs need time in simmering liquid to hydrate fully and thicken evenly. Stopping early leaves the stew thin, and boiling too hard can scorch the bottom of the pan.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, sugar, 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.

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