Name: Tomato Toast
Ingredients: 1 quart stewed ripe tomatoes; 2 tablespoons butter; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; Sugar to taste; 4 slices of bread; 1 pint sweet cream

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 ↓

Tomato Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

Run the stewed tomatoes through a colander.
Place the tomatoes in a porcelain kettle and season with butter, salt, pepper, and sugar.

Toast the bread

Cut the bread into thin slices and brown on both sides.
Place the toasted bread on a platter.

Serve

When ready to serve, add the sweet cream to the tomatoes and pour over the 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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stewed ripe tomatoes: Provide the main body, moisture and tomato flavor of the dish.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavor to the tomatoes.
Bread: Forms the base that soaks up the tomato sauce and gives a toasted texture.
Sweet cream: Adds richness and softens the acidity of the tomatoes when stirred in.

Swap the tomato

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

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Leekfits better
Tomatothe original

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