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Scallop of Corn and Tomatoes

A baked dish of corn and tomatoes topped with butter, breadcrumbs, and optional pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Scallop of Corn and Tomatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shave the corn from the cob.

  2. Layer the corn and peeled, sliced tomatoes in a baking dish.

Season and top

  1. Sprinkle each layer with butter, salt, pepper, sugar, and minced onion, if desired.

  2. Add bits of fat salt pork, if using.

  3. Cover with bread crumbs, seasoned with salt and pepper, and dot with butter.

Bake

  1. Bake covered until bubbling hot, then uncover and brown lightly.

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. Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Corn + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 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

Corn
Forms the bulk of the dish and adds sweetness and body as it cooks.
Tomatoes
Release juice that moistens the layers and gives the dish its acidity.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the top brown lightly.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns and soaks up some of the tomato juice.

The step that matters

Bake covered until bubbling hot, then uncover. Baking covered first heats the layers through while trapping moisture. Uncovering at the end lets the crumbs dry and brown; uncovering too early can leave the dish dry or the topping pale.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, tomato, butter, pepper, sugar, pork, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, tomato, butter, pepper, sugar, pork, 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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