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Stuffed Tomatoes, Mackay Style

Stuffed tomatoes filled with a seasoned pork, veal, and marrow mixture, baked and served with lemon juice and tomato glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,149 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffed Tomatoes, Mackay Style

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. Prepare the tomatoes by removing the tops and scooping out the insides.

  2. Chop the pork, veal, and marrow finely.

  3. Season the meat mixture with salt, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, chives, garlic, and tarragon.

  4. Mix the meat mixture well and stuff the tomatoes with it.

Bake and serve

  1. Arrange the stuffed tomatoes in a buttered flat saucepan.

  2. Place a thin slice of fat pork over each tomato.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until cooked through.

  4. Before serving, squeeze lemon juice over the tomatoes.

  5. Serve with a half glaze or plain reduced tomato puree.

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. Chive + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean pork
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the stuffing.
Veal
Adds tenderness and a delicate texture to the meat stuffing.
Marrow
Adds richness and moisture to the meat filling as it cooks.
Fat pork
Bastes the tomatoes with fat as they bake, keeping the filling moist.
Tomatoes
Act as the edible cups that hold the filling and soften as they bake.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. The raw meat filling must reach a safe internal temperature while the tomato walls stay intact. Baking too long can collapse the tomatoes, while too short leaves the pork and veal undercooked.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pork, veal, pepper, parsley, chive, garlic):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pork, veal, pepper, parsley, chive, garlic. 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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