Skip to main content
Main

Baked Tomatoes

A baked tomato dish stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, and eggs, served with butter, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Baked Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Stuff and bake

  1. Remove the seeds from the tomatoes and fill them with bread crumbs.

  2. Place the stuffed tomatoes in a square baking dish.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until heated through.

  4. Serve with butter and sugar, and cream if desired.

Peel and stew

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes to remove the skins.

  2. Slice the tomatoes and place them in a saucepan.

  3. Add 1½ cups of bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and butter to the saucepan.

  4. Stew gently for 4 to 5 hours.

  5. Fifteen minutes before serving, beat the eggs and stir them into the mixture while boiling.

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. 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. Bread + peppertop 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
Provide the main body and moisture, softening into a sauce as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Absorb tomato juices to hold the filling and thicken the mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the dish.
Eggs
Set as they cook, binding and thickening the mixture.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the boiling mixture. Egg proteins set when heated, so stirring them into a vigorously boiling mixture can scramble them into lumps. Beating them well and stirring steadily helps them blend and thicken it smoothly.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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

More baked tomatoes recipes

Stuffed 10with Bread Crumbs 3with Breadcrumbs 3with Cheese 3 See all 161 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes