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Fried and Broiled Tomatoes

A dish of sliced tomatoes fried or broiled and served with a butter‑milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fried and Broiled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut firm, large, ripe tomatoes into thick slices, about ¼ inch thick.

  2. Season the slices with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Dredge the tomatoes in flour or dip them in egg and coat with bread crumbs.

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Fry the tomatoes in a mixture of hot butter and lard until browned on both sides.

  2. Alternatively, broil the seasoned tomatoes on a well‑greased grill.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream 1 ounce of butter, whisk in 1 pint of milk, and add 1 tablespoon of flour.

  2. Simmer the sauce until it thickens, then season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of mace.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce onto a hot serving dish and arrange the fried or broiled tomatoes in the center.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Large ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body of the dish, with juice that softens and sweetens when cooked.
Flour
Forms a light coating that browns during frying and thickens the milk sauce.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the tomato slices so the coating adheres during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust around the tomato slices when fried.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour for frying and enriches the sauce.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, which thickens as it simmers with the flour.

The step that matters

Simmer the sauce until it thickens. Flour must be cooked while simmering in the milk so its starch swells and thickens the sauce and removes any raw floury taste. Stopping too early leaves a thin, pasty sauce.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, flour, egg, bread, butter, milk. 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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