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Baked Tomatoes

Baked tomatoes filled with onion, breadcrumbs, and seasonings.

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 ↓

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cut a thin slice from the blossom side of each tomato and remove the pulp with a teaspoon.

  3. Chop the onion and mix it with the tomato pulp, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and sugar if desired.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the tomatoes with the mixture and replace the slices on top.

  2. Place the tomatoes in a baking dish, stem side down, with a little water and a small piece of butter on each to prevent burning.

  3. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the tomatoes are tender.

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

Tomatoes
Hold the filling and soften into tender, juicy cups as they bake.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the tomato juices and bind the filling so it stays moist rather than runny.
Onion
Adds savory flavor and aroma to the filling as it softens during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the tops brown and keeps the tomatoes from burning.

The step that matters

Place the tomatoes stem side down with water and butter. The water in the dish gives gentle, moist heat so the tomato walls soften evenly, while the butter adds fat that protects the surface from scorching in the oven.

Swap the onion

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

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

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