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Stewed Tomatoes, Spanish Style

A slow-cooked tomato dish flavored with onion, butter, salt, and red pepper, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Stewed Tomatoes, Spanish Style

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Fry the minced onion slowly in butter for 10 minutes.

  2. Cut the scalded and peeled tomatoes into quarters and add them to the onion.

  3. Simmer the mixture slowly for 1 hour.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and red pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve in a deep vegetable dish surrounded by croutons.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 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
Form the body of the stew and break down into a soft, saucy base as they simmer.
Onion
Softens slowly in butter, adding sweetness and savory depth to the stew.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the onion soften and carry flavor.

The step that matters

Simmering the mixture slowly for 1 hour. A gentle simmer lets the tomatoes break down and their liquid reduce into a thick, concentrated sauce. Boiling hard can scorch the bottom and make the texture uneven.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, pepper. 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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