Skip to main content
Main

Baked Tomatoes

A baked tomato dish with bread crumbs, sugar, butter, corn, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and corn 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 ↓

Baked Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble

  1. Layer half of the chopped tomatoes in a baking dish.

  2. Sprinkle with half of the bread crumbs, sugar, pepper, salt, and bits of butter.

  3. Repeat the layers with the remaining tomatoes and toppings.

  4. Add the corn kernels over each layer, using less bread crumbs and a bit more butter.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for two hours.

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 + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 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 + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 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 bulk of the dish and release juice that moistens the crumbs as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb tomato juice and help thicken the layers as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the topping brown lightly in the oven.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with sweetness.
Green corn
Adds sweet, fresh flavour and tender texture between the tomato layers.

The step that matters

Baking at a low, steady temperature. Tomatoes hold a lot of water. A slow oven lets the juice cook down gently and soften the layers without the dish turning watery or scorching on top.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, pepper, butter, corn. 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.

More baked tomatoes recipes

Stuffed 10with Bread Crumbs 3with Breadcrumbs 3with Cheese 3 See all 161 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes