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Fried Tomatoes

A dish of sliced tomatoes fried in butter, topped with a cream and egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fried Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the tomatoes into thick slices.

  2. Fry the slices in butter until brown.

  3. Cover the tomatoes with cream and bring to a boil.

  4. Remove the tomatoes to a hot platter.

  5. Add the beaten yolks of two eggs to the cream and stir until well mixed.

  6. Take the mixture off the stove and pour it over the 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

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

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Tomato + creamtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 acidic, juicy flavor of the dish.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the tomato slices and adds rich flavor.
Cream
Forms the liquid base that, once thickened, coats the tomatoes.
Egg yolks
Thicken the warm cream into a smooth sauce when stirred in gently.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the cream. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently. If the cream is too hot or boiling when the yolks go in, they can scramble into lumps instead of forming a smooth sauce, so stir steadily and take the mixture off the stove before pouring.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, egg. 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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