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Baked Tomatoes

A simple baked tomato dish seasoned with pepper, salt, butter, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Tomatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Remove the stalks from the tomatoes and cut them into thick slices.

  2. Place the slices in a deep baking dish.

  3. Season with pepper and salt, and add the butter.

  4. Cover the tomatoes with bread crumbs and drizzle a little clarified butter on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes to 1 hour.

  2. Serve very hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 of the dish, softening and releasing juices as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the top brown and the tomatoes taste rounder.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping that contrasts with the soft tomato slices.

The step that matters

Bake until the tomatoes are tender and the topping is browned. The record gives a wide baking range of 20 minutes to 1 hour. Tomatoes are mostly water, so baking long enough lets excess liquid evaporate and concentrates flavour, while the crumbs need enough heat to brown rather than stay pale and soggy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

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