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Tomato & Cheese Pudding

A baked casserole of tomatoes, cheese, biscuits, butter, served with apricot preserves and tea.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tomato & Cheese Pudding

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble

  1. In a baking dish, layer the tomatoes and cheese.

  2. Crumble the biscuits over the top.

  3. Melt the butter and pour it over the dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

  2. Serve with apricot preserves and tea.

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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + teatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together95 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  4. Biscuit + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Tomato + cheesetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide moisture and acidity that soften the dish and carry the flavour through the bake.
Cheese
Melts into the tomatoes to add richness and a binding, savoury layer.
Biscuits
Form a crumbly topping that soaks up juices and browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a rich, tender topping.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Browning comes from Maillard reactions between sugars and proteins at high oven heat. Underbaking leaves the topping pale and soggy, while overbaking can dry the tomato layer and burn the crumbs.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, biscuit, butter, apricot, tea):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, biscuit, butter, apricot, tea. 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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