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Fried Tomatoes

Sliced tomatoes coated in flour and eggs, fried in lard, topped with a milk‑flour‑butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Fried Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel the tomatoes and cut them into large slices.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

Fry

  1. Dip each slice into the wheat flour, then into the beaten eggs.

  2. Fry the slices in hot lard until golden brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, thicken the milk with flour and butter, boil, and pour over the fried tomatoes before serving.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 filling of the dish.
Wheat flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the slices brown and hold together when fried.
Beaten eggs
Bind the flour coating to the tomato slices and help it set during frying.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, adding creamy richness.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the coated slices in hot lard. Lard must be hot enough so the coating crisps and browns quickly; if the oil is cool, the egg and flour coating absorbs fat and turns greasy and soggy instead of golden.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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