Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Rabbit

A cheese and tomato mixture served on crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,076 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tomato Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and melt

  1. Rub a chafing dish pan with a bit of garlic.

  2. Melt the cheese in the pan.

Make and serve

  1. Add strained tomato, salt, pepper, and bread crumbs.

  2. Cook until smooth and serve immediately on large crackers.

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. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Cheese
Melts into a smooth, rich base that gives the rabbit its body and flavor.
Tomato
Adds moisture and acidity, loosening the melted cheese and brightening its flavor.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the mixture, giving it a softer, more cohesive texture.

The step that matters

Cook until smooth. Cheese turns grainy or stringy if overheated or heated too quickly, so it needs gentle heat while the tomato and crumbs are stirred in until the mixture becomes uniformly smooth.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Basilfits about as well
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, pepper, tomato, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipes