Name: Baked Tomatoes
Ingredients: large ripe tomatoes; bread crumbs; coarse sea salt; black pepper; butter; onion (optional); parsley (for garnish)

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).
Cut a thin slice from the smooth end of each tomato and scoop out the pulp without damaging the shape.
Mix the pulp with bread crumbs, coarse sea salt, black pepper, butter, and onion if desired.
Refill the tomatoes with the mixture and replace the tops.
Bake for 45 minutes.
Carefully lift onto a flat dish and garnish with parsley.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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 + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,398 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Carrotfits better
Potatofits better
Onionthe original

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