Name: Stuffed Tomatoes
Ingredients: 4 large tomatoes; 1 onion, chopped; ½ cup fine bread crumbs; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 teaspoon sugar (optional); water; butter

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 ↓

Stuffed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cut a thin slice from the blossom side of the tomatoes.
Use a teaspoon to remove the pulp without breaking the shell.
Mix the chopped onion, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, and sugar into the pulp.
Fill the tomatoes with the mixture and replace the slice on top.
Place the tomatoes in a baking dish, stem side down, with a little water and a lump of butter on each to prevent burning.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Sweet potatofits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, bread, pepper, sugar, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.