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Preserved Tomatoes

A simple dish of preserved tomatoes fried with butter and salt, served hot over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,918 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Preserved Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato gravy

  1. Pour half the contents of the tin of preserved tomatoes into a frying pan.

  2. Add plenty of salt and a slice of butter.

  3. Fry the tomatoes until they are cooked and covered with rich gravy.

Serve

  1. Soak the toast in the gravy, then turn it onto a dish.

  2. Serve very hot.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Preserved tomatoes
Provide the main body and acidity, and their juices cook down into the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the gravy, giving it a smoother, rounder flavour.
Toast
Soaks up the gravy, giving a soft base that holds the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Fry the tomatoes until they are cooked and covered with rich gravy. The tomatoes need enough time in the pan for their liquid to reduce and thicken. If they are pulled too early the gravy stays thin and watery, and the toast turns soggy rather than richly coated.

“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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