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Fried Tomatoes with Green Peppers

A dish of tomato slices sautéed in butter, coated in cornmeal or breadcrumbs, served with a green pepper and onion garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato 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 with Green Peppers

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pepper and onion

  1. Heat the butter in a sauté pan.

  2. Add the minced green pepper and onion and cook until tender.

  3. Remove the pepper and onion mixture to a hot dish.

Fry the tomatoes

  1. Add more butter to the pan.

  2. Sauté the salted tomato slices rolled in cornmeal or breadcrumbs, frying on both sides until golden.

  3. Place the fried tomatoes on a serving dish, cover with butter, and briefly place under the broiler or in a hot oven.

  4. Garnish with the pepper and onion mixture before serving.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomato
Forms the main body of the dish; frying gives the slices a juicy interior and a browned exterior.
Cornmeal or breadcrumbs
Coats the tomato slices, forming a crisp golden crust when fried.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the tomatoes.
Green pepper
Softened in butter, it adds mild sweetness and a fresh, vegetal flavour.
Onion
Softened in butter, it adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the garnish.

The step that matters

Frying the coated tomato slices on both sides. Coated slices need enough hot fat to brown quickly; if the pan is too cool, the coating absorbs grease and turns soggy before it crisps, while overcrowding drops the pan's temperature and steams the tomatoes.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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