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Tomato Fritters

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 sliced tomatoes with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Fry

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

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

  3. Brown one side, then cook slowly for about twenty minutes.

  4. Alternatively, bread the tomatoes and fry 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

Ripe tomatoes
Form the main filling and release juice that softens the coating as they cook.
Milk
Thins the flour into a batter that coats each slice evenly.
Melted butter
Adds fat for frying and helps the batter brown and taste rich.
All-purpose flour
Forms the batter that coats the tomato and crisps when fried.

The step that matters

Brown one side, then cook slowly. An initial browning sets the crust, and gentle heat afterward lets the tomato warm through and soften without scorching the batter.

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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