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Fried and Broiled Tomatoes

Fried and broiled tomatoes served with a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fried and Broiled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut firm, large, ripe tomatoes into thick slices, about ¼ inch thick.

  2. Season the slices with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Dredge the tomatoes in flour or dip them in egg and coat with breadcrumbs.

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Fry the tomatoes in a mixture of hot butter and lard until browned on both sides.

  2. Alternatively, broil the seasoned tomatoes on a well‑greased grill.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, cream 1 ounce of butter, whisk in 1 pint of milk, and 1 tablespoon of flour.

  2. Add the beaten egg, salt, pepper, and a pinch of mace to the sauce.

  3. Simmer the sauce until it thickens, then pour it onto a hot serving dish and arrange the tomatoes in the center.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms a light coating on the tomatoes and thickens the sauce with the milk.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumb coating to the tomatoes and thickens the sauce as it sets.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the tomatoes brown in the pan.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens when simmered.

The step that matters

Simmer the sauce until it thickens. Heating the flour and egg in the milk sets the starches and proteins that thicken the sauce. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while overheating can scramble the egg and curdle it.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, flour, egg, butter, milk):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, flour, egg, butter, milk. 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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