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Fried Tomatoes

Fried tomatoes are tomato slices coated in egg and cracker crumbs, then fried in butter and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Fried Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the tomatoes rather thick.

  2. Dip the slices in the beaten eggs.

  3. Roll the egg-coated slices in cracker crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in a pan with equal parts butter and lard until golden brown.

  2. Remove carefully to avoid breaking.

  3. Serve on a platter.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Tomato + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,890 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 of the dish, softening slightly while keeping their shape when sliced thick.
Eggs
Bind the cracker crumbs to the tomato slices so the coating holds during frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns in the hot fat.
Butter
Adds rich flavor and helps the coating brown in the pan.
Lard
Heats to a high temperature for frying and promotes even golden browning.

The step that matters

Remove carefully to avoid breaking. The egg and cracker coating is only lightly set and the tomato slices are soft, so they can tear when lifted. Gentle handling with a wide spatula keeps the coating intact.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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.

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