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Scalloped Tomatoes

A baked tomato dish layered with butter, breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Scalloped Tomatoes

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 ↓

Scalloped Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice and peel the tomatoes as required.

  2. Butter a deep dish.

  3. Sprinkle the dish with fine bread or cracker crumbs.

Layer

  1. Add a layer of sliced tomatoes.

  2. Sprinkle the layer with salt, pepper, and sugar.

  3. Repeat layers of bread crumbs and tomatoes.

  4. Sprinkle each layer with salt, pepper, and sugar.

  5. Top with bread crumbs.

  6. Moisten with melted butter.

Bake

  1. Bake until brown.

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. 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. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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 that softens and forms the sauce layers.
Fine bread or cracker crumbs
Absorb tomato juice and form a soft, set layer between the tomatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top crumbs brown in the oven.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes and adds sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake until brown. Baking long enough lets the tomato juices thicken into the crumbs and the top brown; too short a bake leaves the dish watery and pale.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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