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Scalloped Tomatoes

Layered tomatoes baked with bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Scalloped Tomatoes

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 ↓

Scalloped 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. Drain most of the juice from the can of tomatoes.

  2. Reserve the juice for soup.

Assemble

  1. Layer bread crumbs in the bottom of a buttered dish.

  2. Add a layer of tomatoes seasoned with pepper, salt, butter, and sugar.

  3. Repeat layers until the dish is full, finishing with bread crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake covered at 350°F (175°C) until hot.

  2. Uncover and brown quickly.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

Bread crumbs
Form the layers that soak up tomato juices and give a soft, pudding-like body.
Tomatoes
Provide moisture, acidity, and the main flavor that the crumbs absorb as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the top crumbs brown when uncovered.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes and encourages browning on the top layer.

The step that matters

Uncover and brown quickly. Baking covered traps steam and keeps the top pale and wet. Removing the cover for a short, hot finish lets surface sugars and butter brown, which is the Maillard reaction at work. Browning too long can dry the dish.

Swap the tomato

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