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Fried Tomatoes

Fried tomatoes are tomato slices coated in flour and fried, served with a thickened milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fried Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Season the tomato slices with salt and pepper.

  2. Coat the slices in flour.

  3. Heat the butter and lard in a skillet over medium heat.

  4. Fry the coated tomato slices until golden brown.

  5. Keep the fried tomatoes hot in a serving dish.

Make the milk gravy

  1. In the same skillet, mix a little flour and butter, then stir in the milk.

  2. Boil the mixture until thickened, then pour it over the tomatoes.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and butter 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
Sliced thick and fried, they provide the main body and juicy interior of the dish.
All-purpose flour
Coats the slices so they brown in the fat and thicken the milk gravy.
Butter
Adds fat for frying and rich flavor to both the tomatoes and the gravy.
Lard
Adds fat with a high smoke point for frying the coated slices.
Milk
Forms the base of the gravy, which thickens into a creamy sauce when boiled with flour.

The step that matters

Boil the milk gravy until thickened. Flour must be cooked in the liquid long enough to swell its starch and thicken the milk. Stopping too early leaves a thin, raw-tasting sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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