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Tomatoes on Toast

A dish of sliced tomatoes sautéed in butter, served on toasted bread with a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Tomatoes on Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Skin the tomatoes.

  2. Slice the tomatoes.

  3. Dredge the sliced tomatoes with flour, salt, and pepper.

Fry and plate

  1. Fry the tomatoes slowly in hot butter for about ten minutes.

  2. Carefully lift the tomatoes out with a cake-turner.

  3. Place the tomatoes on toasted bread.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. In the pan, add butter. Add flour.

  2. Add milk or cream to the gravy. Cook for a few minutes.

  3. Season lightly with salt and pepper.

  4. Pour the sauce over the tomatoes and 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. Butter + breadtop 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. Milk + breadtop 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
Provide the main body and moisture of the dish, softening as they fry.
All-purpose flour
Coats the tomatoes and thickens the butter and milk into a gravy.
Butter
Fries the tomatoes and forms the base of the gravy, adding richness and browning.
Milk or cream
Mixed with the butter and flour to make a smooth, creamy gravy.

The step that matters

Frying the tomatoes slowly. Slow frying in hot butter lets the outside brown while the inside softens without falling apart. Lifting them gently with a cake-turner keeps the slices intact.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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