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Fried Tomatoes

Fried tomato slices sautéed in butter, topped with a cream‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Fry the tomatoes

  1. Heat a skillet over medium‑high heat and add butter.

  2. Fry tomato slices in batches until golden brown.

  3. Carefully remove the fried tomatoes and place them in a dish over hot water.

  4. Sprinkle each layer with sugar, salt, and black pepper.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In the skillet, pour in the cream and whisk in flour until thickened.

  2. Stir until smooth and pour the sauce over the tomatoes.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 slightly tart flavor that the fried crust and sauce complement.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the tomato slices.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the tomato surfaces brown in the pan.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture to make a smooth, rich sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce as it heats.

The step that matters

Whisking flour into the cream. Flour added to hot liquid can clump if not whisked in steadily. Whisking while the mixture heats disperses the starch so it thickens evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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