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Baked Tomatoes

Layered tomatoes, bread crumbs, butter, and seasonings baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

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. Peel the tomatoes with a sharp knife and cut them into thick slices.

Layer and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer bread crumbs and moisten them with a little soup stock or gravy.

  2. Add a layer of seasoned tomatoes with butter, coarse sea salt, pepper, and sugar.

  3. Repeat the layers, finishing with well-moistened crumbs on top.

  4. Cover the dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  5. Uncover and brown quickly before serving in the baking 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 flavors the dish as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the tomato juices and stock, giving the layers a soft, pudding-like texture.
Soup stock or gravy
Moistens the crumbs so they bake tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the top brown during the final step.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes and encourages browning on top.

The step that matters

Uncover and brown quickly. Browning needs dry, direct heat, so the top should be exposed only briefly. Leaving it covered too long keeps the surface steamed and pale, while over-browning can scorch the sugar and butter.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, 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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