Skip to main content
Main

Baked Tomatoes

Tomatoes baked with bread, butter, and seasonings, served with pan liquid.

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

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

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. Wash the tomatoes and cut them in half.

  2. Sprinkle salt, pepper, and sugar on the cut sides.

  3. Butter both sides of the bread slices.

  4. Cover one half of each tomato with a slice of bread and place the other half on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the tomatoes in a baking pan with ½ cup of water and 1 ounce of butter or oil.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes to 1 hour until well done.

  3. Remove each tomato to a dish and pour the remaining liquid from the pan over them.

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

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

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the main body and release juices that soften and flavor the dish.
Light bread
Soaks up tomato juices and softens, giving the tomatoes a soft, filled texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tomatoes' acidity.

The step that matters

Bake until well done. Tomatoes release water as they cook and soften into a tender texture. Baking long enough gives a fully soft result, and the pan liquid spooned back over them becomes the sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, bread, 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