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Beef with Tomatoes

Beef with tomatoes is a dish of broiled beef topped with a tomato sauce made from tomatoes, cloves, butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Beef with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Broil the beef until cooked to your liking.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, boil the tomatoes with cloves, butter, pepper, and salt until thick.

  2. Strain the tomato mixture through a colander.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the beef and serve hot or cold.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main body of the dish, with cooking level set by how long it is broiled.
Tomatoes
Boiled down until thick, they form the sauce that coats the beef.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the tomato sauce.
Cloves
Contribute a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the tomato sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the tomatoes until thick. Tomatoes hold a lot of water, so boiling long enough lets it evaporate and concentrates the flavour. If the sauce is too thin it will run off the beef, and if it is cooked too hard it can scorch on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, 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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