Skip to main content
Main

Fried Tomatoes

Fried tomatoes coated in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs, fried and served with a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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. Select 3 smooth, medium-sized tomatoes and cut them into ½-inch thick slices.

  2. Dredge the tomato slices in flour or dip them in beaten egg and coat with breadcrumbs.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the tomatoes in a small quantity of hot fat, turning to cook both sides evenly.

  2. In a saucepan, combine 1 pint of milk with 1 tablespoon of flour, 1 beaten egg, salt, pepper, and a pinch of mace.

  3. Cream 1 ounce of butter and whisk it into the milk mixture, simmering until it thickens.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce onto a hot serving dish, arrange the fried tomatoes in the center, and serve.

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. Milk + buttertop 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 slightly and releasing juice when fried.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating that protects the tomato slices during frying.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumb coating to the tomato and thickens the sauce as it sets.
Flour
Thickens the milk sauce and gives a light coating for dredging the tomatoes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Whisking the butter into the milk mixture. Flour and egg thicken the sauce only as it simmers, and whisking keeps the mixture smooth. If it is not stirred while heating, lumps can form and the sauce can curdle or scorch on the base of the pan.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

More fried tomatoes recipes

and Onions 3 See all 138 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes