Skip to main content
Main

Baked Tomatoes

Baked tomatoes filled with seasoned bread crumbs, onions, parsley, and butter, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 °F (175 °C).

  2. Cut a round piece from the center of each tomato and scoop out the seeds and soft part.

  3. In a bowl, mix stale bread crumbs with minced onion, parsley, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

  4. Fill each tomato with the seasoned bread crumb mixture.

Bake

  1. Butter a baking pan and place the tomatoes close together.

  2. Dot the tops of the tomatoes with a few bits of butter and add a little water to the bottom of the pan.

  3. Bake in the oven.

  4. If they start to scorch, cover with buttered paper.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Large firm tomatoes
Hold the filling and soften into tender, juicy cases as they bake.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb juices and give the filling body so it holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and promotes gentle browning on the tomato tops.

The step that matters

Watching for scorching. Tomato tops brown quickly because sugars caramelize at high heat. Covering them with buttered paper when they begin to scorch slows browning while the centers finish cooking through.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, bread, parsley, pepper, butter. 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.

More baked tomatoes recipes

Stuffed 10with Bread Crumbs 3with Breadcrumbs 3with Cheese 3 See all 161 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes