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Fried Tomatoes

Fried tomatoes coated in seasoned flour and pan‑fried in lard or bacon drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Fried Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald and skin the tomatoes.

  2. Cut larger tomatoes into 3 slices and smaller tomatoes into 2.

Coat and fry

  1. In a soup plate, mix flour, salt, and pepper.

  2. Roll each tomato slice in the seasoned flour.

  3. Heat lard in a pan until very hot.

  4. Fry the tomato slices slowly until dark brown, then turn and fry the other side.

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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and juice of the dish, which softens and concentrates as they fry.
Flour
Forms a seasoned coating that browns in the hot fat and gives the slices a crisp crust.
Lard or bacon drippings
Conducts heat to the tomato slices and adds fat that promotes browning and a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Fry the tomato slices slowly until dark brown. Frying slowly lets the coating brown through the Maillard reaction without burning, while the tomato moisture cooks off and the centre softens. Too much heat darkens the crust before the slice is cooked.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper. 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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