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Fried Tomatoes

Fried tomatoes are sliced tomatoes coated in flour and fried in butter until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the tomatoes and slice them into thick slices.

  2. Dip both sides of the slices in flour.

Fry

  1. Fry the slices in butter on a griddle 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Firm slices hold their shape through frying and give a juicy centre under a crisp coating.
Flour
Forms a thin coating that browns in the butter and gives the slices a crisp, golden crust.
Butter
Conducts heat to the slices and adds fat that browns the coating and adds rich flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the floured slices. Flour-coated slices need steady medium heat in the butter. Too hot and the coating burns before the tomato warms through; too cool and the slices soak up butter and turn greasy instead of crisp.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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