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Tomatos with Beefsteak

A stew of tomatoes seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, flour, and optional sugar and mustard, served over a broiled beefsteak.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Tomatos with Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato sauce

  1. Remove the skins from the tomatoes and place them in a saucepan.

  2. Add salt, pepper, butter, and flour to the tomatoes.

  3. Let the mixture stew for at least 30 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. While the tomatoes are stewing, broil and season the beefsteak as desired.

  2. Pour the stewed tomatoes over the beefsteak and serve hot.

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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 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 + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Ripe tomatoes
Break down during stewing to form the main body of the sauce and provide moisture.
Flour
Thickens the stewed tomato juices into a light sauce.
Beefsteak
Serves as the main protein, browned under the broiler and topped with the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing the tomatoes. Stewing for at least 30 minutes lets the tomatoes soften and release their juices while the flour thickens them. Stopping early leaves a thin, watery sauce with raw-tasting flour.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, butter, flour, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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