Name: Baked Tomatoes
Ingredients: 1 gallon tomatoes, peeled and chopped; Loaf bread crumbs; 2 tablespoons sugar; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon salt; Butter, in small pieces; Fresh corn, cut off the ear

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 ↓

Baked Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Layer half of the chopped tomatoes in a baking dish.
Sprinkle with bread crumbs, sugar, pepper, salt, and bits of butter.
Add the remaining tomatoes and repeat the layering.
Sprinkle fresh corn over each layer, using less bread crumbs and more butter.

Bake

Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 2 hours.

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.

Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,099 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes: Provide the main body and juice that softens and turns jammy during slow baking.
Bread crumbs: Absorb tomato juice and thicken the layers as they bake.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that helps the top brown lightly.
Fresh corn: Adds sweetness and a tender, juicy texture between the tomato layers.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, pepper, butter, corn):

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits about as well
Tomatothe original
Sweet potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, pepper, butter, corn. 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.