Name: Baked Tomatoes
Ingredients: large ripe tomatoes; streaked salt pork or ham; butter; pepper; sugar; bread crumbs

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Baked Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Peel and slice the tomatoes.
Chop the salt pork or ham finely.
Butter a pudding dish and cover the bottom with tomato slices.
Season with pepper and sugar, then sprinkle with bread crumbs.
Scatter the chopped pork over the tomatoes.
Repeat the layering, finishing with bread crumbs on top.
Cover the dish tightly and bake at 400°F (200°C) for half an hour, or until the juice bubbles at the sides.
Serve directly from the dish.

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.

Butter + breadtop 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).
Tomato + porktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,371 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

Swap the tomato

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

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Tomatothe original
Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, pepper, sugar, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.