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Tomato Toast

A toast topped with a gravy of cooked green tomatoes, sweet cream, butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pare and slice the green tomatoes.

  2. Cook the tomatoes until very tender.

Make the gravy

  1. Add sweet cream and butter to create gravy.

  2. Season the gravy with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Toast and serve

  1. Toast the bread until nicely browned.

  2. Place the toasted bread in a deep dish.

  3. Pour the tomato mixture over the toasted bread.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (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

Green tomatoes
Cooked until very tender, they form the main body of the dish.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and body, helping turn the tomatoes into a smooth gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, giving the gravy a rounder, silkier mouthfeel.
Bread
Toasted to brown and crisp, it gives structure and a crunchy base that soaks up the gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the tomatoes until very tender. Green tomatoes are firm and acidic, so they need enough time to soften fully. Under-cooked pieces stay tough and grainy, and the gravy will not blend smoothly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

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