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Stuffed Tomatoes

Stuffed tomatoes with herb and breadcrumb filling, baked with butter and stock, served with a thickened juice reduction.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stuffed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut the tomatoes in half and remove the seeds.

  2. Chop the parsley, thyme, and eschalot finely.

  3. Mix the herbs with the bread crumbs, adding pepper and salt.

  4. Butter a flat dish and place the tomatoes in it.

  5. Fill the tomatoes with the herb mixture.

  6. Cut the butter into small pieces and place on top of the filled tomatoes.

  7. Pour a little strong stock or glaze around the tomatoes.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the juice from the seeds.

  3. Mix the juice with butter and a little flour to thicken.

  4. Boil the mixture for one minute.

  5. Pour the thickened juice over the tomatoes when serving.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Large tomatoes
Hold the filling and soften into a juicy base as they bake.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the herb filling so it stays in the tomatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the tops brown.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the reserved tomato juice into a sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the thickened juice briefly. Flour only thickens properly once it has been heated in liquid long enough to swell its starch. A short boil also cooks off raw flour taste, so the sauce stays smooth and well flavoured.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, thyme, bread, pepper, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, thyme, bread, pepper, butter. 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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