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Dessert

Pilling for Green Tomato Pie

A boiled filling of green tomatoes, apples, sugar, molasses, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pilling for Green Tomato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the chopped green tomatoes and apples in a pot.

  2. Add brown sugar, vinegar, molasses, raisins, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and butter.

  3. Boil the mixture slowly for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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 a tart, fresh-vegetable body.
Apples
Add pectin and body, helping the filling thicken as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep caramel-like flavor to the filling.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, spiced filling.
Molasses
Adds dark color, sweetness and a robust, slightly bitter depth.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture slowly for 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Slow simmering lets the tomatoes and apples break down and the liquid reduce into a thick filling. Stirring prevents the sugars and molasses from scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, vinegar, molasses, raisin, clove, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, vinegar, molasses, raisin, clove, cinnamon. 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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