Name: Mushrooms and Tomatoes on Toast
Ingredients: 2 tomatoes; 1 ½ lb mushrooms; Toast; Butter; Salt; Pepper

Why it works: Tomato and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,719 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Mushrooms and Tomatoes on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Stamp the bread into rounds and toast it.
Butter the toasted bread.
Remove the stems from the mushrooms and skin them.
Heat butter in a frying pan and fry the onion until soft.
Add the mushrooms and tomatoes to the pan, season with salt and pepper, and mix well.
Transfer the mixture to a buttered baking tin, adding a little butter on top of each mushroom.
Bake for about 10 minutes.
Serve the mushrooms and tomatoes on the rounds of buttered toast.

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.

Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,719 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).