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Scrambled Tomatoes

A tomato and egg dish cooked in butter with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Scrambled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skins from the tomatoes and cut them into pieces.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, add the tomatoes, butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cook until the tomatoes are sufficiently boiled.

  3. Just before serving, add the eggs to the saucepan with the tomatoes.

  4. Stir gently for 2 minutes until the eggs are thoroughly cooked.

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

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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 moisture, breaking down into a sauce as they cook.
Eggs
Set into soft curds as they cook, giving the dish its scrambled texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the tomatoes and helps carry flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs gently at the end. Eggs set from liquid into curds with gentle heat. Cooking them too hard or too long makes them tough and watery, so they should be stirred slowly and removed once just set.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, egg. 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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