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Tomato Toast

Tomato Toast is a dish of fried tomato pulp mixed with eggs, butter, and seasonings, served on buttered 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 ↓

Tomato Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato mixture

  1. Slice the tomatoes and place them in a pan with the butter. Fry for five minutes.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and return the pulp to the pan.

  3. Break in the eggs, then add the seasoning, sugar, and vinegar. Stir over gentle heat until it begins to set.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the bread into small rounds or squares and butter them.

  2. Place a little of the tomato mixture in the center of each piece of toast.

  3. Arrange the toast on a dish, stacking them, and garnish with parsley or cress before serving.

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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main flavour and the pulp that forms the body of the mixture.
Eggs
Set with gentle heat to thicken the tomato pulp into a spoonable topping.
Butter
Adds richness and helps fry the tomatoes, carrying flavour into the pulp.
Vinegar
Adds a small amount of acidity that brightens the sweetness of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs over gentle heat until they just begin to set. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures and turn grainy or scrambled if overheated. Gentle heat, with constant stirring, thickens the mixture smoothly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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