Name: Tomatoes on Toast
Ingredients: 1 or 2 ripe red tomatoes; fine breadcrumbs; pepper; coarse sea salt; butter; hot buttered toast; lemon juice (optional)

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tomatoes on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Slice the tomatoes and remove the seeds.
Arrange the slices in a single layer in a baking tin.

Bake

Sprinkle with seasoned breadcrumbs, pepper, and coarse sea salt.
Place a small amount of butter on each slice.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

Serve

Serve on hot buttered toast and pour the gravy around the dish.
Add a few drops of lemon juice for extra flavor, if desired.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,592 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe red tomatoes: Provide the main body and juicy flavor that softens and warms in the oven.
Fine breadcrumbs: Form a seasoned crust that absorbs juices and browns in the oven.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the topping brown as it bakes.