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Baked Tomatoes

Tomatoes baked with onion, sugar, breadcrumbs, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Skin the tomatoes and remove the hard centers.

  3. Place the tomatoes in a baking pan.

Fill and bake

  1. In each tomato cavity, add minced onion, sugar, moistened bread crumbs, and pepper.

  2. Scatter grated bread crumbs thickly over the tops, filling in the spaces.

  3. Top with small pieces of butter.

  4. Sprinkle with sugar, salt, and pepper.

  5. Bake until browned on top, about 30 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the edible shell that softens and holds the filling while baking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and form a filling that stays moist, then crisp and brown on top.
Butter
Melts over the crumbs, adding richness and helping the topping brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the tomato tops caramelize and brown.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and flavor to the tomato filling as it cooks.

The step that matters

Bake until browned on top. The topping needs enough heat to brown without drying out. Watch the crumbs closely, since the sugar and butter can scorch while the tomatoes are still soft inside.

Swap the onion

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

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

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