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Baked Tomatoes

Tomatoes baked with flour, breadcrumbs, butter, and spices, served on toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the tomatoes, then dust them liberally with flour.

  2. Place the tomatoes in a large baking dish in one layer.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle the top with bread crumbs, small pieces of butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 minutes.

Toast and serve

  1. Slice the bread into ½ inch thick pieces and toast until golden brown.

  2. Dip the toasted bread in slightly salted hot water, spread with fresh butter, and top each slice with a baked tomato.

  3. Serve 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. Bread + buttertop 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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
Provide the main filling and moisture that softens and bakes into the dish.
Flour
Dusted on the tomatoes to help thicken the juices released during baking.
Bread crumbs
Form a topping that absorbs juices and browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the topping brown and taste savoury.
Bread
Forms a toasted base that soaks up the buttery, savoury juices.

The step that matters

Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 minutes. Baking long enough lets the tomato juices thicken with the flour and the crumb topping brown, while too little time leaves them watery and pale.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, butter, 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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