Name: Green Tomato Pie
Ingredients: medium-sized tomatoes; biscuit dough for pie crust; 1 nutmeg, grated; ½ cup butter; 1 cup sugar (if the pan is deep); small handful of flour; ½ cup vinegar

Why it works: Biscuit and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 368 recipes. Both carry maltol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Pare and remove the stem end from the tomatoes, then slice them very thin.
Line your pie pan with biscuit dough.

Fill and bake

Fill the pan with the sliced tomatoes, heaping them slightly.
Grate nutmeg over the tomatoes.
Add ½ cup of butter and 1 cup of sugar if using a deep pan.
Sprinkle a small handful of flour over the mixture.
Pour ½ cup of vinegar over everything before adding the top crust.
Bake for 30 minutes and serve hot.

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.

Biscuit + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together368 recipes

Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together889 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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

Tomatoes: Form the bulk of the filling and provide the pie's main body and tartness.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the filling.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the green tomatoes.
Flour: Thickens the juices released by the tomatoes so the filling sets.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor of the filling.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, nutmeg, butter, sugar, flour, vinegar):

Arrowrootfits better
Shallotfits better
Mustardfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, nutmeg, butter, sugar, flour, 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.