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Tomatoes with Walnuts

A baked tomato dish with walnuts, bread crumbs, cheese, and eggs, served hot on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Tomatoes with Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Plunge tomatoes in boiling water, peel, and place in a buttered saucepan to bake until tender.

  2. Rub the baked tomatoes through a sieve.

Make the filling

  1. Cook chopped onion in butter until light brown.

  2. Add the sieved tomatoes, walnuts, bread crumbs, and cheese to the onion, stirring until well blended.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs, salt, and pepper, and cook for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot on rounds of toast.

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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture, and bright acidity of the filling.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a soft, sliceable texture when heated.
Bread crumbs
Absorb excess tomato moisture and give the filling body.
Walnuts
Add fat, crunch, and a nutty flavor that contrasts the soft filling.
Cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and helps bind the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the beaten eggs. Egg proteins set with heat, so cooking over high heat or too long can curdle them and leave the filling grainy. Stir gently over moderate heat until just thickened.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, butter, walnut, meat, bread, cheese, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, walnut, meat, bread, cheese, 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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