Name: Tomatoes Stuffed
Ingredients: 6 ripe tomatoes; 2 oz bread crumbs; 2 oz ham; 1 teaspoon parsley; pepper; salt; 2 shallots; 1 egg

Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Tomatoes Stuffed

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Choose tomatoes of the same size.
Cut out the center of each tomato halfway through.

Stuff and bake

Fill the cavity with finely chopped ingredients mixed with the raw egg, piling it high.
Butter a baking dish and place the stuffed tomatoes inside.
Bake for about 12 minutes.

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.

Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,398 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes: Serve as the hollow shell that holds the filling while it bakes.
Bread crumbs: Absorb moisture and bind the filling so it holds its shape.
Egg: Sets when baked, binding the filling together.
Ham: Adds savoury, salty flavour to the filling.
Shallots: Add mild onion flavour to the filling.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, ham, parsley, pepper, shallot, egg):

Chivefits better
Leekfits better
Spinachfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, ham, parsley, pepper, shallot, egg. 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.