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Fried Tomatoes

Fried tomatoes are sliced under‑ripe tomatoes coated in flour and egg, fried, served with a milk‑flour‑butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fried Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the under‑ripe tomatoes and cut them into thick slices.

  2. Sprinkle the slices with salt and pepper.

Fry

  1. Dip each slice into flour and then into the beaten egg.

  2. Fry the slices in hot oil until golden brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For a sauce, thicken a cup of milk with flour and butter, boil, and pour 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Under-ripe tomatoes
Main ingredient; their firmer flesh holds its shape when sliced and fried.
Flour
Forms a coating that browns and crisps in the hot oil.
Egg
Binds the flour coating to the tomato slices so it stays on during frying.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, which is thickened with flour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. Hot oil sets the flour and egg coating quickly so it crisps instead of soaking up oil and turning greasy. Oil that is too cool lets the coating absorb fat and can leave the tomato slices soft and oily.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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