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Fried and Broiled Tomatoes

A dish of sliced tomatoes fried or broiled, served with a creamy butter‑milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 the tomatoes into thick slices, about ¼ inch thick.

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

  3. Dredge the seasoned slices in flour or dip them in beaten egg and coat with crumbs.

Cook the tomatoes

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

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

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream the butter, whisk in the milk, and add flour, beaten egg, salt, pepper, and mace.

  2. Simmer the sauce until it thickens.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce onto a hot serving dish and arrange the tomato slices 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

Large ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender, browned exterior.
Flour
Forms a light coating that browns during frying and helps the sauce thicken.
Butter
Adds richness and encourages browning in the frying fat and the sauce.
Lard
Adds a high-heat frying fat that helps the tomato slices brown well.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess as it thickens.
Beaten egg
Binds the crumb coating to the tomato and adds richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the sauce until it thickens. Flour and egg thicken the milk mixture as it heats; if the sauce is under-simmered it stays thin, and if it boils hard or too long the egg can curdle and the sauce can turn grainy.

Swap the mace

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

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

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