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Fried Green Tomatoes

Fried green tomatoes are sliced tomatoes soaked in soda water, coated in flour, fried in butter, served hot on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,655 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fried Green Tomatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the large green tomatoes and soak them in soda water for 1-2 hours.

  2. Roll the soaked tomatoes in flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the floured tomatoes in butter until they are crisp and brown.

  2. Serve hot on lettuce leaves.

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 + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  2. Flour + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Large green tomatoes
Provide the main body of the dish, softening slightly while frying and staying firm inside.
Soda water
Carbonation in the soak adds a light, airy quality to the coating once it is fried.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that browns and crisps in the hot butter.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the flour coating and adds rich flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the floured tomatoes in butter. Butter can burn at high heat before the coating crisps, so keep the heat moderate and watch for golden browning rather than dark colour.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, lettuce. 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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