Name: Green Tomato Pie
Ingredients: 3 medium-sized green tomatoes; 1 cup sugar; 1 orange (juiced); 1 tablespoon butter; a sprinkle of cinnamon; ½ cup chopped raisins

Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Slice the tomatoes very thin.
Line a pie tin with rich crust.

Fill and bake

Place the tomatoes and raisins in the pie tin.
Sprinkle the sugar over the tomatoes and raisins.
Add the butter, cinnamon, and orange juice.
Cover with an upper crust and bake.

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.

Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Tomato + orangetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together689 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,348 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Green tomatoes: Provide the bulk of the filling and its tart, fresh flavour.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the green tomatoes.
Orange juice: Adds acidity and citrus brightness to the filling.
Raisins: Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.
Butter: Adds richness and fat to the filling.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, orange, butter, cinnamon, raisin):

Sweet potatofits better
Arrowrootfits better
Beetrootfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, butter, cinnamon, raisin. 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.