Name: Baked Tomatoes
Ingredients: 4 large tomatoes; ½ cup bread crumbs; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); 1 onion (optional); 2 tablespoons cornmeal; 1 teaspoon sugar (if tomatoes are acid)

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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Peel the tomatoes and place them in a baking dish.
Add bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, and onion if desired.
Sift cornmeal over the top.

Bake

Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 2 to 3 hours.
If the tomatoes are acidic, sprinkle sugar instead of salt.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes: Soften during long baking, releasing juice that moistens the topping and forms a sauce.
Bread crumbs: Absorb tomato juice and butter, giving a thick, lightly crisp topping.
Butter: Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the topping brown gently.
Cornmeal: Adds a slightly gritty, crisp texture to the top crust.
Sugar: Balances the sharpness of acidic tomatoes, adding sweetness.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, bread, butter, pepper, sugar):

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Sweet potatofits better
Onionthe original

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