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Scalloped Tomatoes

A baked tomato dish with bread crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Scalloped Tomatoes

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 ↓

Scalloped 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.

Prepare

  1. Drain nearly all the juice from the can of tomatoes and season with salt and pepper. Set aside for later use.

Assemble

  1. In a buttered pie dish, layer bread crumbs at the bottom.

  2. Add a layer of seasoned tomatoes, sprinkle with salt, pepper, bits of butter, and a little sugar.

  3. Repeat with another layer of crumbs and another layer of seasoned tomatoes.

  4. Top with a final layer of very fine, dry crumbs.

Bake

  1. Bake covered at 400°F (200°C) until bubbling hot, then uncover to brown quickly.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. 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 main body and tangy flavour of the dish once softened by baking.
Bread crumbs
Soak up tomato juice and set into a soft, layered texture between the tomatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown as the dish finishes baking.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Drain nearly all the juice from the can of tomatoes. Excess liquid makes the crumbs soggy and the dish watery. Keeping the tomatoes fairly dry lets the crumbs absorb the juice and bake into a set, spoonable texture.

Swap the tomato

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