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Tomato Bredee

A mutton stew with tomatoes, onions, and spices, served over plain boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tomato Bredee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Cut the mutton and onion into pieces.

  2. Stew them in a flat pot for 1 hour.

  3. Slice the tomatoes and add them to the pot.

  4. Add salt, sugar, and red chili.

Finish and serve

  1. If there's excess liquid, remove the lid and simmer until the sauce is rich and creamy.

  2. Remove the fat before serving.

  3. Serve with plain boiled rice.

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 + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Mutton + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton ribs
Provides the main meat, whose fat and connective tissue enrich the stew as it cooks.
Tomatoes
Supply acidity and liquid that break down into the body of the sauce.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savory depth as it softens into the stew base.

The step that matters

Simmering with the lid off. If excess liquid remains, simmering uncovered lets it evaporate so the sauce thickens and becomes rich rather than watery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, tomato, sugar, rice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, tomato, sugar, rice. 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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