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Creamed Tomatoes

Tomatoes simmered with butter, salt, sugar, cream, and baking soda, served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Heat the tomatoes in a saucepan.

  2. Season with salt, sugar, and butter.

  3. Just before serving, stir in the cream and baking soda.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on small squares of hot buttered toast.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Tomato + creamtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the base of the dish, providing the main body, moisture, and tangy flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the tomatoes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savory flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato acid, which helps keep the cream from curdling.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and baking soda. Tomatoes are acidic, and acid can make cream curdle when they are heated together. Baking soda neutralizes some of that acid, and adding the cream just before serving, without letting the mixture boil afterward, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream. 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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