Name: Baked Tomato Puddino
Ingredients: Butter (for greasing); 2 cups bread crumbs; 4 medium tomatoes, peeled and sliced; 1 small onion, finely chopped; 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 tablespoons sugar; 2 tablespoons butter (for topping)

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Baked Tomato Puddino

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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Butter the inside of a deep pudding dish.

Layer and bake

Layer 1 cup of bread crumbs, followed by a layer of sliced tomatoes and chopped onion.
Dredge with flour, pepper, salt, and 1 tablespoon of sugar.
Repeat layers until the dish is full, finishing with bread crumbs and small bits of butter on top.
Cover the dish and bake for 1 hour.
Uncover and bake for an additional hour.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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, moisture and tangy flavour of the pudding.
Bread crumbs: Soak up tomato juices and form the soft, pudding-like structure between layers.
Flour: Thickens the juices released by the tomatoes as the pudding bakes.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Sugar: Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Covering the dish for the first hour. Keeping the lid on traps steam so the tomatoes soften and the layers cook through before the top is exposed to dry heat to brown.

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Eggplantfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, tomato, flour, pepper, 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.

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Cream of Tomato Soup107 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Baked Tomato Puddino