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Scalloped Tomatoes

A baked dish of layered tomatoes, bread crumbs, butter, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Scalloped Tomatoes

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 ↓

Scalloped 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. Drain the liquid from the tomatoes.

  2. Sprinkle the bottom of a buttered baking dish with dry bread crumbs, seasoned with salt and pepper.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the drained tomatoes on top, adding bits of butter and a sprinkle of sugar.

  2. Repeat the layering until the dish is filled, finishing with a layer of seasoned and buttered crumbs.

  3. Cover the dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  4. Uncover and brown slightly under the broiler before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 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
Provide the main body and moisture of the dish once drained and layered.
Dry bread crumbs
Form a absorbent layer that soaks up juices and helps the dish hold its structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that promotes browning on top of the crumbs.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Drain the tomatoes. Excess liquid from canned tomatoes would thin the dish and make the crumb layers soggy instead of letting the dish set and hold its layers.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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