Name: Roast Tomatas
Ingredients: Tomatoes; Gravy; Arrowroot or flour; Butter; Cream

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Tomatas

Ingredients

Directions

Select tomatoes of similar size and remove the stalks.
Roast them gently in a Dutch oven or at the edge of a dripping pan, ensuring no fat from the meat falls on them.
Turn the tomatoes occasionally for even cooking, roasting for 10 to 14 minutes.
Arrange the tomatoes in a single layer and pour enough gravy to reach half their height.
Stew them softly until the undersides are done, then turn and finish stewing.
Thicken the gravy with arrowroot and cream or with flour and butter, and serve it around the tomatoes.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tomato + arrowroottop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,918 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Arrowroot + creamtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together490 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Arrowroot + buttertop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together610 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).