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Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes

A dish of scrambled eggs cooked with tomatoes, onions, salt, pepper, and sugar, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the grated onion, strained tomatoes, salt, white pepper, and sugar; cover and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and set aside.

Scramble and serve

  1. Beat the eggs with a fork and add them to the tomato mixture.

  2. Cook the eggs, breaking them into large curds as they cook.

  3. Serve the scrambled eggs on the toasted bread.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into soft curds that form the body of the dish.
Strained tomatoes
Provide moisture and a bright, acidic tomato flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and keeps the eggs tender.
Grated onion
Adds savoury aroma and depth to the tomato base.

The step that matters

Cook the eggs, breaking them into large curds as they cook. Egg proteins set with heat, and cooking them too hot or too long makes them tough and watery. Removing the pan from heat when the eggs are still slightly glossy lets residual heat finish them gently.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, tomato, sugar, 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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