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Eggs in Tomato Sauce

Eggs cooked in tomato sauce served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Eggs in Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine tomatoes, butter, and flour.

  2. Rub the flour smooth in a little tomato juice and season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

  3. Boil for a few moments, then strain through a sieve and add baking soda.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop in the eggs and cook, basting often with the sauce.

  2. Once done, place each egg on a piece of toast and pour sauce around it.

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 + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 liquid base and acidity for the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the sauce a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the tomato liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato's acidity, mellowing the sauce's sharp taste.
Eggs
Set in the simmering sauce, providing the main protein and soft texture.

The step that matters

Basting the eggs. Spooning sauce over the eggs helps the whites set evenly while the yolks stay soft, since the surface cooks faster than the centre. Cooking too hard or too long makes the yolks firm and chalky.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, sugar, egg. 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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