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Baked Tomatoes

A baked tomato dish layered with breadcrumbs, butter, and spices.

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

Baked Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a baking dish.

Layer

  1. Cover the bottom of the dish with a layer of tomatoes.

  2. Add a layer of fine bread crumbs on top of the tomatoes.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and nutmeg.

  4. Scatter bits of butter over the bread crumbs.

  5. Repeat the layers until the dish is full.

  6. Finish with a top layer of bread crumbs and more butter.

  7. Baste the top with a little cold water before baking.

Bake

  1. Cover the top with cardboard for the first half hour of baking.

  2. Bake for 1 hour or more until golden and bubbly.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the moist, acidic filling that softens and bakes into a juicy base.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb the tomato juices and form a soft, lightly crisp topping.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the top brown and crisp as it bakes.

The step that matters

Cover the top with cardboard for the first half hour. Covering traps steam so the tomatoes cook through and the crumbs do not brown too early. Uncovering later lets the top turn golden and crisp.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

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