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Stuffed Tomatoes

Stuffed tomatoes filled with a savory mixture of butter, onion, crumbs, and tomato pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stuffed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut a slice from the stem end of the tomatoes and remove the insides.

Make the filling

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter or cook the bacon or ham until crisp.

  2. Add the chopped onion and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the tomato pieces, cracker crumbs, and corn bread crumbs.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, adding more tomato if needed.

  5. Cook until thick, then stuff the mixture into the tomato shells.

Bake

  1. Bake until the tops are brown.

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 + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the juicy shells and pulp that moisten the stuffing.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb tomato juice and thicken the filling into a firm stuffing.
Corn bread crumbs
Add body and a soft, absorbent texture to the filling.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the fat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the tops brown.

The step that matters

Cook until thick before stuffing. Cooking drives off excess tomato moisture and lets the crumbs swell and bind. A loose filling will make the tomato shells soggy and cause the stuffing to weep during baking.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, corn, bread, 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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