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Tomato Cream Toast

A toast topped with a creamy tomato sauce made from butter, flour, tomato, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tomato Cream Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour, salt, and paprika; stir to form a smooth paste.

  3. Gradually add the stewed and strained tomato mixed with baking soda.

  4. Stir in the scalded cream until well combined.

Serve

  1. Dip the slices of toast into the sauce and serve as milk toast.

  2. Pass a dish of freshly grated Parmesan cheese with each portion.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,490 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + parmesan cheesetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,566 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and helps form the smooth flour paste.
Flour
Thickens the sauce into a smooth, creamy body.
Stewed and strained tomato
Provides the main liquid, flavour, and acidity of the sauce.
Baking soda
Neutralises some tomato acidity, softening its sharpness.
Scalded cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the tomato mixed with baking soda. Adding liquid slowly to the flour-butter paste keeps it smooth without lumps. Baking soda reacts with tomato acid and may foam, so mixing it in first helps it blend evenly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, parmesan cheese):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, parmesan cheese. 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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