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Tomato Toast

Tomato Toast is a simple dish of toasted zwieback topped with a thickened tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Tomato Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Moisten the slices of zwieback with water or broth.

  2. Heat the strained stewed tomato in a saucepan until boiling.

  3. In a small bowl, mix the corn-starch or flour with a little cold water to form a smooth paste.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the paste to the boiling tomato and stir until thickened.

  2. Season with salt and stir in the hot cream if using.

Serve

  1. Serve the tomato dressing over the moistened zwieback.

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. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Tomato + creamtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Zwieback
Soaked in liquid so it softens, forming the moist base under the sauce.
Stewed tomato
Provides the main body, moisture and tangy flavour of the dressing.
Corn-starch or flour
Thickens the tomato liquid into a smooth, spoonable sauce when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the acidity of the tomato, if used.

The step that matters

Make the starch paste smooth before adding it. Starch dispersed in cold water first, then added to boiling liquid, thickens evenly. Added dry or in lumps, it clumps and leaves a grainy sauce.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, cream. 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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