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Egg and Tomato Toast

A toast topped with a tomato and egg mixture cooked in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Egg and Tomato Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the tomatoes, slice them, and remove the seeds.

  2. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a saucepan, add the eschalot (or onion) and tomato slices, and cook gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Beat the eggs and season with pepper and salt.

Make the topping

  1. Stir the eggs into the saucepan with the tomato mixture, and keep stirring until it thickens.

Serve

  1. Prepare some buttered toast, and spread the mixture thickly on top.

  2. Arrange the toast on a hot dish, garnish with parsley, and serve immediately.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set and thicken as they cook, giving the topping its body.
Tomatoes
Provide moisture and acidity that soften and flavour the savoury topping.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while cooking the onion and tomato.
Eschalot or onion
Adds savoury aroma and sweetness as it cooks gently in butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the tomato mixture. Over moderate heat, constant stirring keeps the eggs in fine curds so they thicken smoothly. If left unstirred, the egg proteins can set in lumps or scramble against the pan.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, onion, butter, pepper. 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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