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Baking

To Bake Tomatoes

A baked tomato dish with buttered stale bread, bread crumbs, and sugar topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Bake Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Scald and peel the tomatoes.

  2. Butter a shallow baking dish and arrange the whole tomatoes inside without breaking them.

  3. Fill the spaces between the tomatoes with buttered stale bread.

Make the sauce

  1. Mash the remaining tomatoes and strain out the hard parts.

  2. Mix the strained tomatoes with butter, salt, and pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the tomatoes in the dish.

  2. Strew bread crumbs on top and sprinkle sugar between each layer of tomatoes.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.

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 + 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
Supply the main body and juice that softens into a sauce as they bake.
Stale bread
Soaks up tomato juice, giving the dish a soft, absorbent body.
Bread crumbs
Form a topping that browns and adds a crisp contrast to the soft tomatoes.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the tomatoes and encourages browning on top.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the crumbs brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Arrange the whole tomatoes without breaking them. Whole tomatoes hold their shape while baking only if their skins stay intact and they are handled gently. Broken tomatoes release juice early, leaving a watery dish with less structure.

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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