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Tomato Rarebit

A tomato-based cheese sauce served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Tomato Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Pour in the milk and stir until boiling.

  4. Rub the tomatoes through a sieve and add the tomatoes to the mixture.

  5. Stir in the baking soda, Lea & Perrins sauce, grated cheese, made mustard, salt, and pepper.

  6. Add the beaten egg and heat through without boiling.

Serve

  1. Pour over hot buttered toast.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  3. Serve immediately.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour while forming the start of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the cheese melts into.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, colour and fresh tomato flavour to the sauce.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it richness and its characteristic savoury flavour.
Beaten egg
Thickens the sauce gently and adds richness when heated without boiling.

The step that matters

Heat through without boiling. Once the beaten egg is added, boiling can curdle the proteins and make the sauce grainy. Gentle heat thickens it smoothly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, sauce, cheese, mustard, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, sauce, cheese, mustard, pepper. 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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