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Escaloped Tomatoes

Layered tomatoes with cracker crumbs, butter, sugar, and seasonings baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Escaloped Tomatoes

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 ↓

Escaloped 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.

Assemble

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

  2. In an earthen baking dish, layer cracker crumbs and small bits of butter.

  3. Add a layer of tomatoes and sprinkle a little sugar over them.

  4. Repeat the layers of cracker crumbs seasoned with butter and tomatoes until the dish is filled.

  5. Finish with a layer of cracker crumbs on top.

  6. Pour a little water over the dish to moisten it.

  7. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper to taste.

Bake

  1. Bake for 30 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  4. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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
Provide the juicy, acidic body of the dish that softens and bakes into a sauce.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb the tomato juices and give the dish a soft, set, layered structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the crumbs brown lightly on top.
Sugar
Sweetness that balances the sharpness of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Layering the crumbs and tomatoes. Crumbs must be spread evenly between tomato layers so they soak up the juices. Uneven layering can leave pools of watery sauce or dry, pasty patches once baked.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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