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Baked Tomatoes

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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.

Prepare

  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. Add the remaining tomatoes and repeat the layering with the remaining ingredients.

  4. If using corn, reduce the amount of bread crumbs and increase the butter slightly.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 2 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 they bake.
Bread crumbs
Soak up tomato juice and thicken the layers, giving the dish a firmer texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the topping brown and flavour the layers.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes and adds sweetness.

The step that matters

Layering the tomatoes and crumbs. Even layers with the seasoning spread through them let the juices and crumbs combine evenly. Uneven layering can leave dry patches or pooled liquid during the long, slow bake.

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.

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