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Fried Tomatoes

A dish of tomato slices dredged in flour, fried in butter, served with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Wash the tomatoes.

  2. Slice the tomatoes without removing the skin.

  3. Mix black pepper, coarse sea salt, and flour. Dredge the tomato slices on both sides.

Fry and keep warm

  1. Heat enough melted butter in a frying pan to cover the bottom. Add the tomato slices to the hot pan.

  2. Cook the tomato slices until done.

  3. Place the cooked tomatoes on a hot dish to keep warm.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Add milk or water to the liquid in the pan.

  2. Melt ½ tablespoon of butter in a separate bowl. Brown together 1½ tablespoons of flour and ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt. Add the liquid from the pan to the bowl.

  3. Pour the mixture through a wire strainer. Serve the sauce with the 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. Butter + milktop 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body of the dish, softening into juicy slices as they cook in butter.
All-purpose flour
Coats the slices so they brown in the butter and the flour thickens the pan sauce.
Melted butter
Fries the coated slices, giving browning and rich flavour.
Milk or water
Mixed with the pan liquid to make a thinner sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour for the sauce. Flour cooked in butter until golden gives a nutty flavour and thickens the sauce. If it is pulled too early it tastes raw and pasty, and if it burns it turns bitter.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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