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Fried Tomatoes

Fried tomatoes are tomato slices coated in egg and crumbs, then pan‑fried until golden.

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 ↓

Fried Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the ripe tomatoes.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and season with salt, pepper, and sugar (1 teaspoon sugar per egg).

  3. Dip the tomato slices in the egg mixture, then coat them in bread or cracker crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Place as many tomato slices as will fit in the pan and fry for 10 minutes, flipping halfway through.

  3. Serve the fried tomatoes on slices of 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. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 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

Ripe tomatoes
Form the main body of the dish, softening and warming as they fry.
Eggs
Bind the crumbs to the tomato slices so the coating adheres during frying.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating that contrasts with the soft tomato inside.
Butter
Conducts heat in the pan and adds fat for browning and a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Fry in a single layer over medium heat. Crowding the pan drops its temperature and steams the tomatoes instead of browning the crumb coating. Medium heat lets the coating brown and the tomato warm through without burning the crumbs.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

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