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Fried Tomatoes

Fried tomatoes coated in flour and eggs, pan‑fried and served with a thickened cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fried Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the tomatoes and cut them into thick slices.

  2. Season the slices with salt and pepper.

Fry

  1. Dip each slice into flour, then into the beaten eggs.

  2. Fry the slices in hot lard or oil on a griddle until golden brown.

  3. Sprinkle a little sugar over the tomatoes while cooking, if desired.

Make the cream sauce and serve

  1. Remove the fried tomatoes and pour in the heavy cream.

  2. Thicken the cream over heat and season to taste.

  3. Pour the cream sauce over the fried tomatoes.

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

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Flour + sugartop 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. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 main body and slightly acidic, juicy flavor of the dish.
All-purpose flour
Forms a coating that browns in the hot fat and helps the egg adhere.
Eggs
Bind the flour coating to the tomato slices and help it set and brown.
Heavy cream
Thickens over heat into a rich sauce that adds fat and smoothness.

The step that matters

Fry the slices in hot fat until golden brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the coated slices absorb oil and turn greasy instead of crisping. Frying over steady heat sets the egg and flour coating and browns it evenly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, egg, cream, 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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