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Dressed Tomatoes

Tomatoes filled with a ham, parsley, and breadcrumb mixture, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Dressed Tomatoes

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cut a slice off the stem end of each tomato and scoop out the pulp without breaking the rind.

  3. Remove all seeds from the pulp and stew it down.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the stewed pulp with shallots, parsley, ham, breadcrumbs, egg yolk, and salt until smooth.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the tomato rinds with the mixture, sprinkle with buttered breadcrumbs, and place in a greased baking dish.

  2. Baste the tomatoes with butter and bake until golden brown.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Tomato + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together583 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Their rinds act as edible cups, and their pulp supplies moisture and tangy flavour to the filling.
Egg yolk
Binds the filling so it holds its shape when baked.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture from the pulp and give the filling body and a browned top.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Scoop out the pulp without breaking the rind. The rind is the only container for the filling, so a torn wall lets the filling leak and the tomato collapse in the oven.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, parsley, ham, egg, 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.

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