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Baked Tomatoes

A baked tomato dish with buttered bread and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Baked 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. Grease a shallow baking dish with butter and place the whole tomatoes inside without breaking them.

  3. Fill the spaces between the tomatoes with small pieces of buttered bread.

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

  5. Mix the strained tomatoes with a spoonful of butter, salt, and pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the tomatoes in the baking dish and sprinkle bread crumbs on top.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 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.

  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 + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body and juicy, acidic flavor of the dish as they soften while baking.
Bread
Soaks up tomato juices and butter, giving the filling a softer, more cohesive texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the tomatoes brown lightly and carrying flavor.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping that browns in the oven and contrasts with the soft tomatoes.

The step that matters

Place the whole tomatoes without breaking them. Keeping the tomatoes intact preserves their shape and holds the juices in while baking; broken skins let liquid run out and the dish turn watery and loose.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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