Name: Baked Tomatos
Ingredients: 6 tomatoes; ⅓ cup Parmesan cheese; ⅔ cup bread crumbs; butter; coarse sea salt to taste; pepper to taste

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 Tomatos

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Cut the tomatoes in half and remove the seeds.
Fill the inside with a mixture of Parmesan cheese and bread crumbs.
Place a piece of butter on each half and arrange them in a well-buttered baking dish.

Bake and serve

Bake for 30 minutes at 300°F (150°C) and serve.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,163 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Tomato + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,490 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 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: Form the main body of the dish and soften into a moist, tender filling when baked.
Parmesan cheese: Adds savory, salty flavor and helps the topping brown as it bakes.
Bread crumbs: Absorb juices from the tomatoes and form a textured topping.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the topping brown in the oven.

Swap the tomato

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

Tomatothe original
Capsicumfits about as well
Asparagusfits about as well
Spinachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against parmesan cheese, bread, butter, 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.