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Tomatoes with Cream Gravy

A tomato dish simmered in a creamy gravy made with butter, cream, and flour.

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

Tomatoes with Cream Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the tomatoes in half and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Fry the tomatoes in fresh lard until brown on both sides.

  3. Add butter and cream to the pan.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour mixed with 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. 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body of the dish, softening and browning in the fat to add savoury flavour.
Lard
Fat for frying that browns the tomatoes and carries flavour across the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the pan sauce and helps bind the flour for thickening.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the liquid, creating a smooth, creamy gravy.
Flour
Thickens the pan liquid into a gravy as it cooks with the butter.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour mixed with butter. Flour mixed with butter, cooked in the pan liquid, gelatinises starch and thickens the gravy. Adding it lumpy or without enough cooking can leave the sauce grainy or thin.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, cream, 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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