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Broiled Tomatoes with Sauce

A dish of broiled tomatoes topped with a sauce made from butter, egg yolks, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Broiled Tomatoes with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Rub together the melted butter, pounded yolks, cayenne, salt, mustard, and sugar.

  2. Beat in the vinegar and heat the mixture until it boils.

  3. Gradually add the hot mixture to the beaten eggs, whipping until smooth.

Broil and serve

  1. Set the sauce in hot water while broiling the tomatoes over clear coals.

  2. Serve the tomatoes on a hot dish and pour the hot sauce over them.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Tomato + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw eggs
Thicken the sauce into a smooth, creamy emulsion as they cook with the hot mixture.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and body to the sauce, blending smoothly into the butter.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body and juicy, slightly acidic flavor of the dish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor of the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the hot mixture to the beaten eggs, whipping until smooth.. Adding hot liquid to raw eggs too quickly can scramble them. Adding it slowly while whisking gently warms the eggs so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, vinegar, sugar, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, vinegar, sugar, mustard. 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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