Skip to main content
Main

Tomatoes on Toast

Tomatoes on Toast is baked tomato slices topped with breadcrumbs, butter, and seasonings, served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tomatoes on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove the seeds from the tomatoes and slice them.

  2. Arrange the tomato slices in a single layer in a baking tin.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle the slices with seasoned breadcrumbs, pepper, and salt.

  2. Place a small amount of butter on each slice.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the baked tomatoes on hot buttered toast, pouring the gravy around the dish.

  2. Add a few drops of lemon juice for extra flavor if desired.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 juice that softens and forms the gravy as they bake.
Fine breadcrumbs
Absorb tomato juices and butter, forming a light, lightly browned topping.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the breadcrumb topping brown in the oven.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, butter):

  1. Mangofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, 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 tomato toast recipes

Cheese 3 See all 55 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes