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Breakfast Broiled Tomatoes

A simple dish of halved tomatoes broiled with butter, brown sugar, and honey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and honey are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,327 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Breakfast Broiled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and halve the tomatoes.

  2. Place them in a shallow pan.

Broil and serve

  1. Dot with butter and sprinkle with brown sugar and honey.

  2. Broil for 5 minutes.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Butter + honeytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,327 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  2. Tomato + honeytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Sugar + honeytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,932 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 juice that softens and warms under the heat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the tomato surface brown lightly under the broiler.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the tomato surface caramelise and brown.
Honey
Adds sweetness and gloss, and helps the surface brown further under the broiler.

The step that matters

Broil for 5 minutes. Broiler heat varies a lot between ovens, and the sugars can burn quickly once they start to caramelise. Checking early helps the tomatoes brown without scorching.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, honey. 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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