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Stuffed Tomatoes

Stuffed tomatoes filled with a mushroom, parsley, and shallot mixture, topped with breadcrumbs and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. 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 the tomatoes

  1. Blanch the tomatoes in boiling water for 1 minute, then remove the skins.

  2. Carefully scoop out the insides of the tomatoes and season with salt and pepper.

Make the stuffing

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat, then stir in the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the chopped mushrooms, parsley, shallot, salt, and pepper; stir until heated through.

  3. Add a small amount of stock and simmer for 5 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the tomatoes with the stuffing, sprinkle with bread crumbs, and bake at 400°F (200°C) for a few minutes.

  2. Serve very hot.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + breadtop 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

Tomatoes
Form the edible shell that holds the stuffing and softens as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing base.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter into a base that binds the stuffing together.
Mushrooms
Add savory, earthy flavor and bulk to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Simmering the stuffing with stock. Flour thickens the liquid only as it simmers, so the stuffing should be cooked until it is thick enough to hold its shape rather than running out of the tomatoes.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mushroom, parsley, shallot, pepper, bread. 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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