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Creamed Tomatoes

Creamed tomatoes are sliced tomatoes cooked in butter, milk or cream, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Season the sliced tomatoes.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan.

  3. Add the tomatoes and cook until tender, turning frequently.

  4. Mix the flour with the milk or cream until smooth.

  5. Stir the milk mixture into the tomatoes and cook until thickened, stirring constantly.

  6. Serve immediately with rolls.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 and juice that cook down into the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the tomatoes soften.
Milk or cream
Supplies liquid and fat that give the sauce a creamy, smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it becomes a smooth, cohesive sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the milk mixture into the tomatoes and cook until thickened. Flour must be fully mixed smooth with the milk before adding, and constant stirring keeps it from clumping. Heating the starch in the liquid swells the granules and thickens the sauce; stopping too early leaves it thin, and overcooking can make it stiff.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, 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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