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Fried Tomatoes

Fried tomatoes cooked in butter, milk, sugar, salt, and flour.

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

Fry the tomatoes

  1. Cut the tomatoes in half.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and add the tomatoes skin side up.

  3. Cook for 30 minutes.

  4. Turn the tomatoes and cook for another 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. After an hour, add the milk, sugar, salt, and flour, and cook thoroughly.

  2. Remove from heat.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

Butter and flour 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

Tomatoes
Form the main body of the dish and release tart juice into the pan.
Butter
Fat that fries the tomatoes and helps them brown at the surface.
Milk
Adds liquid and creaminess to the sauce as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the milk and pan juices into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tomatoes' acidity and aids browning.

The step that matters

Cook thoroughly after adding the milk and flour. Flour only thickens fully when heated long enough with the liquid, and stopping early leaves a raw, floury taste and a thin sauce. Keep the heat moderate so the milk does not scorch or curdle.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, sugar, flour. 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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