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Dessert

Green Tomato Pie

A pie made with sliced green tomatoes, brown sugar, spices, butter, vinegar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel the tomatoes and slice them very thin.

  2. Chop the slices slightly to avoid large chunks.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix the tomatoes with brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, butter, and vinegar.

  2. Sprinkle flour over the mixture.

  3. Bake with both upper and lower crust until sweet and well spiced.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the filling and its tart, fresh body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps form a thick, glossy syrup as the filling cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the spices.
Flour for sprinkling
Thickens the juices released by the tomatoes so the filling sets.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and spice flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Chop the slices slightly. Tomato slices release a lot of liquid as they cook. Cutting them smaller helps the filling cook evenly and thicken, while large chunks can stay watery and firm.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, clove, allspice, nutmeg, butter, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, clove, allspice, nutmeg, butter, vinegar. 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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