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Stuffed Tomatoes

A baked dish of tomatoes filled with bread crumbs, onion, butter, salt, pepper, and optional grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stuffed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cut off the stem ends of the tomatoes and remove the seeds.

  3. In a bowl, mix the bread crumbs, chopped onion, butter, salt, and pepper.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the tomatoes with the mixture.

  2. Sprinkle grated cheese on top before baking for an extra touch.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes and serve in the same dish.

Variation

  1. For variation, use half bread crumbs and half cooked rice, and omit the onions if desired.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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 and softens as it bakes.
Dry bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the tomato and form the bulk of the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling and helps it brown lightly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lima beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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