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Fried Tomatoes

Fried tomatoes coated in breadcrumbs and served with a buttery sauce.

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 ↓

Fried Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Wipe and cut the tomatoes in half.

  2. Dip the cut side of each half in fine bread crumbs seasoned with pepper, salt, and sugar.

  3. Place them in a buttered baking pan, skin side down.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop bits of butter between the tomatoes and fry slowly over moderate heat, turning when brown.

  2. Once tender, carefully lift them with a spatula and place on a heated platter.

Make the sauce

  1. In the same pan, add more butter and when browned, stir in 2 tablespoons of flour until smooth.

  2. Pour in 2 cups of milk or cream, stirring steadily until it boils.

  3. Add more seasoning if needed and pour the sauce around the tomatoes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Main vegetable that softens and browns on the cut side while frying.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a seasoned crust that browns and helps the tomato surface crisp.
Butter
Fat that fries the tomatoes and browns to add flavor to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, thickened sauce.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding body and richness.

The step that matters

Stirring flour into the browned butter. Flour must be cooked smoothly into the fat before liquid is added; stirring until smooth prevents lumps, and adding milk while stirring steadily keeps the sauce from scorching or clumping as it thickens to a boil.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, sugar, butter, flour, milk. 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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