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To Stew Tomatoes

A tomato stew made with tomatoes, bread crumbs, onion, butter, brown sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

To Stew Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut enough tomatoes to make 3 pints.

Stew

  1. Put tomatoes in a saucepan with chopped onion, salt, and pepper.

  2. Let them stew for 30 minutes.

  3. Add bread crumbs, sugar, and butter.

  4. Stew for 1 hour longer, chopping tomatoes frequently while stewing.

Serve

  1. Serve.

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. Bread + buttertop 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 main body of the dish and break down into a sauce as they stew.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the stewed tomato liquid and give it body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Long, gentle stew with bread crumbs. Tomatoes are acidic and can scorch on the bottom of the pan during a long simmer, so stir or chop them often. Bread crumbs need time to hydrate and thicken evenly; adding them too early or stirring too little can leave lumps or a burnt base.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

More stewed tomatoes recipes

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