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Baked Tomatoes

Baked tomatoes topped with butter, breadcrumbs, and gravy.

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

Assemble

  1. Drain excess juice from the can of tomatoes into boiling soup.

  2. Lay the tomatoes in a buttered pie dish.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, butter, and sugar.

  4. Strew bread crumbs over the top.

  5. Add a little gravy saved from yesterday's ragout.

Bake and brown

  1. Cover and bake for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove cover and brown the top.

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 + breadtop 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. Pepper + breadtop 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 juicy base and acidity that the seasoning and topping sit on.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a topping that absorbs juices and browns into a crisp layer.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tomatoes' acidity.
Gravy
Adds savory depth and extra moisture to the dish.

The step that matters

Remove cover and brown the top. Baking covered traps steam, which keeps the tomatoes moist. Uncovering lets surface moisture evaporate so the bread crumbs can dry and brown. Skipping this step leaves the top soft and pale.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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