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Tomato Toast

A toasted bread topped with stewed tomatoes, butter, sugar, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Toast the bread until brown.

  2. Stew the tomatoes and season with salt, pepper, butter, and sugar.

  3. Add the cream and scald it gently.

  4. Pour the tomato mixture 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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Bread + tomatotop 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

Bread
Provides a crisp, browned base that holds the tomato topping.
Tomatoes
Supply the main moisture and bright acidity of the topping.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the tomatoes.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder flavor and silkier mouthfeel.
Sugar
Balances the tomatoes' acidity with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Scalding the cream. Heat the cream gently until it is steaming with small bubbles at the edge, not boiling. High heat can scorch the milk solids, and cold or overheated cream may curdle or separate when it meets the acidic tomatoes.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, butter, sugar, 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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