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Tomato Rarebit

A tomato and cheese mixture cooked with butter, onion, and eggs, served hot on crackers or toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish or saucepan.

  2. Add the chopped onion and brown it.

  3. Stir in the canned tomato, salt, cayenne pepper, and sugar; bring to a boil.

  4. Add the grated cheese and raw eggs; stir until the eggs are cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately on crackers or small slices 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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + cheesetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the cheese mixture as they cook, giving it a soft, creamy body.
Grated cheese
Provides rich flavor and melts into the sauce for a smooth, savory texture.
Canned tomato
Supplies acidity and liquid that forms the base of the sauce.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma as it browns in the butter.

The step that matters

Stir in the eggs until cooked. Eggs thicken when heated but can curdle or scramble if overheated or cooked too fast. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly so the eggs set smoothly into the sauce rather than turning lumpy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, pepper, sugar, 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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