Name: Scallop of Corn and Tomatoes
Ingredients: 4 ears of corn; 4 tomatoes; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); 1 teaspoon sugar; 2 tablespoons minced onion; ½ cup fine bread crumbs

Why it works: Corn and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Scallop of Corn and Tomatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Shave the corn from the cob.
Layer corn and peeled, sliced tomatoes in a baking dish.
Sprinkle each layer with butter, pepper, salt, sugar, and minced onion.
Add shreds of fat salt pork if desired.

Bake and serve

Cover with fine bread crumbs, seasoned with pepper and salt, and dot with butter.
Bake covered until bubbling hot, then uncover and brown lightly.
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.

Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corn: Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it sweet, tender body.
Tomatoes: Add moisture and acidity that combine with the corn into a juicy filling.
Bread crumbs: Form a crisp, browned topping that helps hold moisture beneath.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the topping brown lightly.
Sugar: Balances the tomato acidity and enhances the sweetness of the corn.

The step that matters

Bake covered until bubbling hot, then uncover and brown lightly.. Baking covered traps steam so the filling heats through and softens evenly. Uncovering at the end lets the crumbs dry and brown; leaving the lid on too long leaves the topping pale and soggy.

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Carrotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, 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.

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Corn Fritters203 recipes

Cream of Tomato Soup107 recipes

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Scallop of Corn and Tomatoes