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Stewed Tomatoes

A dish of tomatoes cooked with butter, flour, and bread crumbs until thickened.

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, pour boiling water over them and let stand for a moment.

  2. Drain and cover with cold water, then peel the tomatoes and cut them into pieces.

  3. In a granite saucepan, cook the tomatoes for about 10 to 15 minutes until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate saucepan, rub together the butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Pour in the cooked tomatoes and stir constantly over heat until boiling and thick.

  3. Mix in the stale bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and sugar if using.

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and liquid of the dish as they soften and break down when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the flour blend smoothly into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the tomato liquid into a smooth, thick sauce as it heats and boils.
Stale bread crumbs
Help thicken the stewed tomatoes and give them a more substantial texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the tomatoes until boiling and thick. Flour thickens only when heated to a boil, and stirring constantly keeps it from clumping or scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, bread, pepper, 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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