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Fried Tomatoes

Breaded tomato slices fried in butter or lard and served with a milk‑flour gravy over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Fried Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Remove the skins from the tomatoes and slice them into ¼ to ½ inch thick slices.

  2. Dip the tomato slices in the beaten eggs, then coat them with bread crumbs.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Fry the coated tomatoes in hot butter or lard until golden brown.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  3. In a separate pan, thicken the gravy by stirring flour into the milk and heating until smooth.

Serve

  1. Place the fried tomatoes on toast on a hot platter and pour the gravy over them.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the bread crumbs to the tomato slices so the coating holds during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
Butter or lard
Fries the coating, adding browning and rich flavor.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth gravy.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, adding creaminess.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy. Flour must be stirred into the milk so starch disperses evenly; clumps form if flour is dumped in or the mixture is not stirred while heating. Heating gelatinizes the starch, which thickens the gravy and makes it smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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