Skip to main content
Main

Escalloped Tomatoes

A baked tomato dish with bread and butter.

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

Escalloped Tomatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Butter a baking dish.

  2. Cut the bread into small squares.

  3. Season the tomatoes with pepper and salt.

Assemble

  1. Layer bread in the bottom of the baking dish.

  2. Pour some of the tomatoes over the bread.

  3. Add another layer of bread and more tomatoes until all ingredients are used.

  4. Moisten the bread crumbs with melted butter and spread over the top.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes, or until the crumbs are nicely browned.

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

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

  5. Sugar + buttertop 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

Tomatoes
Provide the liquid and acidity that soften the bread and flavour the dish.
Bread
Absorbs the tomato juices, giving the dish its soft, pudding-like structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and helps the topping brown.
Bread crumbs
Form a topping that browns and crisps in the oven.

The step that matters

Moisten the bread crumbs with melted butter. Butter coats each crumb so it browns evenly. Dry crumbs stay pale and gritty, while buttered crumbs turn golden and crisp.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes