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Tomato Toast

Tomato Toast is a bread dish topped with stewed tomatoes, butter, salt, pepper, sugar, and sweet cream.

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

Tomato Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Run the stewed tomatoes through a colander.

  2. Place the tomatoes in a saucepan and season with butter, salt, pepper, and sugar.

Toast the bread

  1. Cut the bread into thin slices and brown on both sides.

  2. Butter the toasted bread and lay it on a platter.

Assemble and serve

  1. Just before serving, add sweet cream to the tomatoes and pour over the toast.

  2. Serve immediately to prevent the toast from getting too soft.

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 + breadtop 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 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

Stewed tomatoes
Provide the main body and tangy flavor of the sauce poured over the toast.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the tomatoes and the toast.
Bread
Forms the crisp base that the warm tomato sauce soaks into.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and softens the acidity of the tomatoes.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Serve immediately. Once the tomato sauce and cream are poured over the toast, the bread absorbs liquid and softens quickly. Serving right away keeps the toast with some texture and contrast.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, sugar, bread, cream. 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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