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Stewed Tomatoes

A dish of tomatoes cooked slowly with onion, butter, pepper, salt, and optional sugar, served with or without stale bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Wash the tomatoes and pour boiling water over them; let stand for 5 minutes to easily remove the skins.

  2. Cut off the stem end and divide the tomatoes into halves or quarters; place them in a china-lined kettle.

Stew

  1. Set the kettle on the fire uncovered and cook for about 1 hour, then ladle out the juice and set it aside for soup.

  2. Add the quartered onion to the tomatoes and simmer for 1 to 2 hours, cooking very slowly.

Finish and serve

  1. Drain off any excess juice, then add a lump of butter, pepper, salt, and a pinch of sugar if needed; serve.

  2. Alternatively, after peeling, add stale bread-crumbs and chopped onion to the tomatoes and cook for an additional hour.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, breaking down into a soft, juicy stew as they cook.
Onion
Adds savory depth and sweetness as it softens slowly into the tomatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished stewed tomatoes.
Stale bread-crumbs
Absorb excess liquid and thicken the stew as they soak up the juices.

The step that matters

Cooking the tomatoes slowly. Simmering gently over a long period softens the tomatoes and concentrates flavor without scorching. Too much heat can burn the bottom of the kettle and make the stew taste harsh.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, pepper, sugar, 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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