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Eggs with Tomatoes

A simple dish of eggs cooked in a tomato sauce with onions, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Eggs with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. In a skillet, brown the minced onion in the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until it bubbles.

  3. Add the tomatoes and bring to a boil.

Add the eggs

  1. Beat the eggs together and slowly stir them into the boiling tomato mixture.

  2. Cook until the eggs thicken, then season with salt and pepper 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.

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

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

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Eggs
Set and thicken into soft curds that give the dish its body.
Tomatoes
Provide the main liquid and a tangy, acidic flavour base.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps brown the onion.
Flour
Thickens the tomato liquid slightly before the eggs go in.
Onion
Adds savoury depth as it browns in the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the boiling tomatoes. Adding the beaten eggs slowly keeps them from clumping into lumps. Egg proteins set with heat, so pouring them into a steadily boiling mixture while stirring helps them form fine, even curds.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, onion, 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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