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Side Dish of Tomatoes

A tomato side dish made with canned tomatoes, butter, flour, onion, sugar, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Side Dish of Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Cook the canned tomatoes, cloves, and onion in a pot for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the tomatoes through a colander.

Make the roux

  1. In a separate pan, heat the butter.

  2. Add the flour to the butter and stir over heat until smooth and brown.

Combine and season

  1. Combine the strained tomatoes with the butter and flour mixture.

  2. Cook for a few more minutes, then season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and sugar.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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

What each ingredient does

Canned tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and acidity of the side dish.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness and fat to the sauce.
Flour
Cooked with butter into a roux that thickens the tomatoes.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a hint of sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter roux. Stirring the flour into melted butter until smooth and lightly browned cooks out its raw starch taste and thickens the liquid evenly. If lumps form or the roux burns, the sauce turns gritty or bitter, so keep the heat moderate and stir constantly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, onion, sugar, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, sugar, pepper. 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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