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Baked Tomatoes

Baked tomatoes seasoned with salt, butter, and chives, served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and chive work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 538 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Baked Tomatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the tomatoes in half and remove the green stem.

  2. Place them cut side up in an agate baking pan.

  3. Season each half with a little coarse sea salt and small vegetables if using.

  4. Add a piece of butter and some finely chopped chives or onion on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 15 minutes. Do not overcook; they should hold their shape.

  2. Serve each tomato on round pieces of buttered toast.

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 + chivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together538 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + chivetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Firm ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body of the dish, softening gently while keeping their shape when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, melting over the tomatoes as they bake.
Chives
Add a mild, fresh onion flavour that brightens the baked tomato.

The step that matters

Do not overcook. Tomatoes are mostly water. Prolonged heat breaks down their cell walls, so they collapse into liquid instead of holding their shape. Pull them as soon as they are just tender.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, chive. 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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