Skip to main content
Main

Fried Tomatoes

Sliced tomatoes coated in an egg and milk batter, fried in lard until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,226 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Fried Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the tomatoes and slice them.

  2. In a bowl, make a batter by mixing the egg, sweet milk, and salt.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the sliced tomatoes in the batter.

  2. Fry the battered tomatoes in hot lard until golden brown.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,890 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 of the dish, softening slightly and releasing moisture as they fry.
Egg
Binds the batter so it coats the tomato slices and sets into a crisp layer when fried.
Sweet milk
Thins the batter so it spreads evenly over the tomato slices.
Lard
Conducts heat to brown the batter and gives the coating a rich, crisp finish.

The step that matters

Frying the battered tomatoes in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of forming a crisp, golden crust. Hot fat sets the coating quickly, keeping the tomato inside tender and the crust crisp.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk. 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.

More fried tomatoes recipes

and Onions 3 See all 138 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes