Skip to main content
Main

RElish for Cold Meat Luncheon

A tomato relish with butter, breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, and vinegar, baked until heated.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

RElish for Cold Meat Luncheon

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 the tomatoes

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

  2. Cut the tomatoes in half and scoop out some of the flesh.

  3. Fill each half with butter, bread crumbs, salt, and pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the filled tomatoes in a baking dish and drizzle with vinegar.

  2. Bake for 20-25 minutes until heated through.

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. Butter + breadtop 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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 a juicy, tender base as they heat.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Soak up butter and tomato juices, giving the filling body and a slightly firm texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the tomatoes.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes