Name: Scalloped Tomatoes with Meat
Ingredients: ½ pint cold minced meat; 1 tablespoon parsley, chopped; 1 onion, finely chopped; ½ pint tomatoes, peeled and sliced; ½ cup bread crumbs; pepper, to taste; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon butter

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Scalloped Tomatoes with Meat

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

Mix the minced meat with the bread crumbs.
Add the chopped onion, parsley, pepper, and salt.

Assemble and bake

Line the sides of a pie dish with sliced tomatoes.
Fill the dish with the meat mixture and cover with more sliced tomatoes.
Sprinkle with bread crumbs, pepper, and salt.
Dot with butter and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Bread + buttertop 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).
Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,398 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Minced meat: Forms the savory base of the filling and gives the dish its main body.
Tomatoes: Add moisture and acidity, lining the dish and covering the filling as it bakes.
Bread crumbs: Absorb juices and help bind the meat mixture into a sliceable filling.
Onion: Adds aromatic sweetness and depth of flavor as it softens in the filling.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, helping the top brown in the oven.

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Carrotfits better
Potatofits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, parsley, tomato, bread, pepper, butter. 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.