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Tomato Toast

Toasted bread topped with cooked tomatoes and a splash of cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Tomato Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato sauce

  1. Rub the tomatoes through a colander.

  2. Cook the tomatoes to your taste.

Toast and serve

  1. Toast the bread slices.

  2. Butter the toasted bread and lay it on a hot dish.

  3. Just before serving, add the cream or milk to the tomatoes and pour over the toast.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  4. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main flavor, acidity and liquid body of the sauce.
Bread
Forms a crisp base that holds the tomato sauce on top.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the toast and helps it brown.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and softens the sharp edge of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Adding the cream or milk. Dairy added to hot, acidic tomatoes can curdle or separate. Adding it just before serving, to the cooked sauce, keeps it smooth and creamy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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