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Tomato Toast

Tomato Toast is a dish of sliced green tomatoes cooked with sweet cream or butter, seasoned, and poured over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Tomato Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pare and slice the green tomatoes.

  2. Cook the sliced tomatoes until very tender.

  3. Add sweet cream (or more butter if using sweet milk).

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and butter.

Serve

  1. Toast the bread nicely.

  2. Place the toasted bread in a deep dish.

  3. Pour the tomato mixture over the toasted bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the main body and tart flavor of the topping once cooked down.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the tomatoes into a smooth mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the tomato mixture.
Bread
Forms the base that soaks up the tomato mixture.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

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