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Tomatos Fried

Tomatoes fried in butter or lard after coating with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tomatos Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the tomatoes into thick slices (¼ inch) without skinning them.

  2. Flour the tomato slices.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a little butter or lard in a frying pan.

  2. Add the sliced tomatoes to the pan.

  3. Brown one side, then turn and brown the other side.

  4. Serve in a dish or over a broiled steak or chicken.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and juicy flesh that softens and sweetens as it cooks.
Flour
Forms a light coating that helps the tomato slices brown and develop a crisp surface.
Butter or lard
Conducts heat in the pan and adds fat that promotes browning and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Brown one side, then turn and brown the other side. Cooking over steady medium heat lets the flour coating and sugars brown through the Maillard reaction without burning, while the tomato centre warms and softens. Turning only once keeps the slices intact.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. 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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