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Baked Tomatoes

A baked tomato dish with bread crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Baked Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Peel the tomatoes and slice them into ¼-inch thick slices.

  2. Place a layer of tomatoes in a pudding dish and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  3. In a bowl, mix the bread crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, and sugar until combined.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread the mixture thickly over the tomatoes, using all of it, and add another layer of tomatoes.

  2. Dot the top with small pieces of butter, dust with pepper and a little sugar, and sprinkle with dry crumbs.

  3. Cover and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake until 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 + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the juicy base that softens and bakes into the filling.
Bread crumbs
Form a crumb topping that absorbs juices and browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the crumb topping brown.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the tomatoes' acidity and aids browning.

The step that matters

Bake covered, then uncovered. Baking covered first traps steam so the tomatoes soften through, and removing the lid lets moisture evaporate so the crumb topping can brown. Uncovering too early leaves the topping dry and pale, while leaving it covered too long keeps the top soggy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

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