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Devilled Tomatoes

A tomato dish with a buttery mustard sauce and egg, served hot or cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato 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 ↓

Devilled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes to loosen the skins, then peel and slice them thickly.

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter, then mix in the powdered sugar and mustard until well combined.

  2. Add the salt and pepper, then rub in the yolk of a hard‑boiled egg using a sieve.

  3. Heat the vinegar and mix it into the sauce, then add a beaten raw egg.

  4. Set the sauce over hot water and cook until it thickens to a cream‑like consistency.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the tomato slices in butter, pour the sauce over them, and serve hot or cold.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it a creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the tomato slices brown when fried.
Hot vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the sweetness and richness.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that gives the sauce its characteristic bite.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and acidic fruit flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce over hot water until it thickens. Raw egg proteins set when heated, but too much direct heat can scramble the egg. Gentle hot-water heat lets the sauce thicken smoothly into a cream.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mustard, egg, vinegar, sugar, 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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