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Fried Tomatoes

Fried tomatoes served with a sauce of milk or cream thickened with flour and seasoned with salt, pepper, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Fried Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut ripe tomatoes in half and fry slowly on both sides in butter and lard until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Remove the tomatoes from the pan and pour a little milk or cream into the frying pan.

  3. Thicken the milk or cream with a little flour and season with coarse sea salt and a pinch of red pepper.

  4. Pour the sauce over the tomatoes and 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. 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

Ripe tomatoes
Form the main body of the dish and soften into tender, juicy halves when fried.
Butter
Adds fat for frying and a rich, browned flavor on the tomato surfaces.
Lard
Adds fat with a high smoke point, helping the tomatoes fry slowly without burning.
Milk or cream
Forms the base of the sauce, adding richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk or cream into a sauce that clings to the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk or cream with flour. Flour must be whisked in gradually so it disperses without lumps. Its starch swells when heated in the liquid, so the sauce thickens evenly and stays smooth instead of gritty.

Swap the onion

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

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

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