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Baked Tomatoes

Breaded tomato slices baked until golden, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,013 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Baked Tomatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the tomatoes well and slice them crosswise without peeling.

  2. Season the slices with salt and sugar if desired.

Coat and bake

  1. Dip each slice in white flour, then in the beaten egg, and finally in the grated bread-crumbs.

  2. Place the coated slices on an oiled baking tin.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

  4. Serve hot.

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

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the juicy filling that softens and warms through during baking.
White flour
Gives the first dry layer that helps the egg coating cling to the slices.
Beaten egg
Acts as a glue that binds the bread-crumb coating to the tomato.
Zwieback bread-crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Coat the slices in order, pressing crumbs on firmly. Flour, egg, then crumbs builds a sticky base for each layer. If the slices are wet or the crumbs are loose, the coating slides off and the crust bakes unevenly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, egg, 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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