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Baked Tomatoes

A baked tomato dish with bread crumbs, butter, and seasonings, served as a side or appetizer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Drain off two-thirds of the liquid from the tomatoes and set it aside for soup.

  2. Cover the bottom of a baking dish with bread crumbs.

  3. Lay the tomatoes evenly on the crumbs and season with pepper, salt, sugar, and parsley.

Layer and bake

  1. Dot the tomatoes with small pieces of butter.

  2. Sprinkle a thicker layer of bread crumbs on top of the butter. Add more tiny pieces of butter on the top layer.

  3. Cover and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 35 minutes.

  4. Remove the cover.

  5. Brown the tomatoes on the upper shelf of the oven, being careful not to let them dry out.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 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 moisture of the dish, softening into a juicy base as they bake.
Bread crumbs
Absorb tomato juices and form a layered, slightly crisp topping as they toast.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the top layer brown during baking.

The step that matters

Brown the tomatoes without drying them out. Once the cover is removed, the exposed surface can dry and scorch quickly. Browning under the upper oven shelf needs watching so the tomatoes keep their juices while the crumbs turn golden.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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