Skip to main content
Main

Tomatoes and Mushrooms

A baked dish of sliced tomatoes and mushrooms topped with bread crumbs and butter.

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

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 ↓

Tomatoes and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and layer

  1. Wash and peel the tomatoes, then slice them.

  2. Layer the sliced tomatoes and mushrooms in a baking dish.

  3. Season the tomato sauce with finely chopped onion and pour it over the layers.

  4. Top with buttered bread crumbs.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

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. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  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

Tomatoes
Form the main layers and release juices that moisten the dish as it bakes.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and savoury, earthy flavour between the tomato layers.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture and tangy flavour that soaks into the layers.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that absorbs some juices and browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the bread crumbs brown evenly and adds richness.
Onion
Contributes savoury aroma and depth to the tomato sauce.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The buttered crumbs brown through Maillard reactions and fat, so the colour is the cue for doneness. Too little baking leaves the topping pale and the layers watery, while too long can scorch the crumbs.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, mushroom, bread, sauce, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes