Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Tomata Dumplings, or Puddings
Ingredients
Directions
Carefully peel the tomatoes without breaking the flesh or removing the seeds.
Prepare your dumpling dough using flour, water, salt, and butter.
Wrap each tomato in a piece of dough, ensuring it is fully enclosed.
Steam the dumplings until the dough is cooked through and the tomatoes are tender.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,918 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,065 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter 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
Swap the tomato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter):
- Shallotfits better
- Leekfits better
- Arrowrootfits better
- Tomatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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