Skip to main content
Main

Creamed Tomatoes

Creamed tomatoes is a tomato dish thickened with butter, pepper, salt, celery, and a flour‑cream mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Creamed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Pour the tomatoes into a saucepan.

  2. Season the tomatoes with butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add the celery to the saucepan.

  4. Cook the tomatoes until done; canned tomatoes need very little cooking.

  5. Ensure the tomatoes are boiling rapidly.

Finish with cream

  1. Before serving, add the heavy cream mixed with flour.

  2. Stir in the cream quickly.

  3. Continue stirring until the flour is cooked.

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 + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and juicy base of the dish.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the tomatoes.
Flour
Thickens the cream so it coats the tomatoes instead of separating.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Stir the cream and flour in quickly. Flour mixed into hot liquid can form lumps if it is not stirred in quickly and kept moving. Stirring until the flour is cooked removes its raw taste and lets the mixture thicken smoothly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, celery, cream, flour. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes