Name: Baked Tomatoes
Ingredients: smooth, even-sized ripe tomatoes; coarse sea salt; butter or cream

Why it works: Tomato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,918 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Baked Tomatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

smooth, even-sized ripe tomatoes
coarse sea salt
butter or cream

Directions

The book says “a rather hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Peel and remove the stems from the tomatoes.
Place the tomatoes in an earthen pudding dish.

Bake and serve

Season with a little coarse sea salt and butter or cream.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes.

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.

Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,918 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Smooth, even-sized ripe tomatoes: Provide the main body and juice that softens and concentrates as they bake.
Butter or cream: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and helping the tomatoes brown lightly.

“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.