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Baked Tomato Toast

A baked toast topped with a tomato and milk mixture, seasoned with pepper, salt, sugar, and baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Baked Tomato Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Cook tomatoes with pepper and salt for 15 minutes.

  2. Sieve through a colander and return to the heat.

Make the sauce

  1. In another saucepan, heat milk with baking soda.

  2. Add butter and flour, stirring for 1 minute.

  3. Mix sugar with the tomato mixture, then combine with the boiling milk.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour over toasted, buttered bread slices packed in a pudding dish.

  2. Cover and bake for 10 minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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, moisture and acidic tomato flavor of the dish.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that softens the bread and gives a mild, rich body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savory flavor.
Flour
Thickens the hot milk as its starch swells, giving the sauce body.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the tomatoes with gentle sweetness.
Crustless bread slices
Soak up the sauce and give the dish its soft, layered structure.

The step that matters

Combining the tomato mixture with the boiling milk. Tomatoes are acidic, and acid added to hot milk can make it curdle or separate. Adding the sugar and flour first, and combining gently, helps keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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