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Tomato Toast with Poached Eggs

A tomato toast topped with poached eggs, seasoned with salt, pepper, sugar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Tomato Toast with Poached Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato sauce

  1. Place the sliced tomatoes in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add salt, pepper, sugar, and butter to the tomatoes.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Toast the bread slices.

  2. Butter the toasted bread.

  3. Place the buttered toast on a hot dish.

  4. Pour the tomato mixture over the toast.

  5. Top each slice with a poached egg.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Break down into a juicy, saucy topping that moistens the toast.
Eggs
Set when poached, adding richness and a runny yolk that blends with the tomatoes.
Bread
Provides a crisp, sturdy base that holds the sauce without going soggy.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the tomatoes and coats the toast.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the tomatoes for 10 minutes. Boiling reduces the tomatoes' water and concentrates their flavor, so the sauce thickens rather than spreading thin and soaking the toast. Keep the heat steady so the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, butter, bread, 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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