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Tomato Fritters

Tomato fritters are slices of tomato coated in a milk, butter, and flour batter and fried until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Tomato Fritters

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Tomato Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and slice the cold, ripe tomatoes.

  2. Lightly season the tomato slices with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Batter and fry

  1. Dip each tomato slice into a batter of milk, melted butter, and flour.

  2. Fry the battered slices in a frying pan, turning gently with a spatula to avoid breaking.

  3. Cook until browned on one side, then continue cooking slowly for about twenty minutes.

Alternative method

  1. Alternatively, bread the tomato slices and fry them in hot butter.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold, ripe tomatoes
Juicy filling that softens as it heats, giving the fritter its moisture.
Flour
Forms the batter that coats the slices and sets into a crisp outer layer.
Milk
Thins the batter and its milk proteins and sugars help the coating brown.
Melted butter
Adds fat that carries heat, enriches the batter, and aids browning and flavor.

The step that matters

Cook slowly after browning one side. If the heat is too high, the batter can darken or scorch before the tomato inside warms through. Slow cooking lets the centre heat evenly while the coating turns golden.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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