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Tomatoes for Breakfast

Baked tomatoes topped with a butter and cream sauce, served with hot toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Tomatoes for Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cut the tomatoes in half and place them in a pan, skin side down.

  3. Add a piece of butter on each tomato and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake until the tomatoes are tender.

  2. Remove the tomatoes with a spatula onto a hot serving dish.

  3. In the same pan, add the cream to the juice and bring to a boil.

  4. Thicken the cream mixture with flour and pour it over the tomatoes.

  5. Serve with hot 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 + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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
Soften during baking and release juice that mixes with the cream to form the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the tomatoes brown and carries flavour across the surface.
Cream
Forms the rich body of the sauce, adding fat and a smooth, creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the boiled cream and juice mixture so it clings to the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Thicken the cream mixture with flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid to swell and thicken the sauce. Adding it to cold or unboiled cream can leave lumps or a starchy taste, so bring the cream to a boil first and stir steadily.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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