Name: Escalloped Tomatoes
Ingredients: 2 cups bread crumbs; 2 tablespoons butter; 4 medium tomatoes, sliced; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 teaspoon sugar (optional); 1 medium onion, sliced (optional)

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 ↓

Escalloped 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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble

In a buttered baking dish, layer bread crumbs seasoned with bits of butter.
Add a layer of sliced tomatoes seasoned with salt, pepper, and sugar if desired.
If desired, mix sliced onions with the tomato slices.
Repeat the layers, finishing with bread crumbs on top.

Bake

Bake for about 45 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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).
Bread + tomatotop 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

Bread crumbs: Form the body of the dish and soak up tomato juices, keeping the layers from turning soggy.
Tomatoes: Provide the moist, acidic filling that bakes down into a sauce around the crumbs.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, and helps the top crumbs brown in the oven.
Sugar: Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Sweet potatofits better
Onionthe original

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