Skip to main content
Dessert

Ripe Tomato Pie

A baked pie with sliced tomatoes, brown sugar, flour, cream, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ripe Tomato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Slice the tomatoes.

  2. Line a pie tin with pie crust.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the sliced tomatoes in the crust.

  2. Mix the flour with the brown sugar and sprinkle over the tomatoes.

  3. Pour the cream over the mixture and sprinkle with nutmeg.

  4. Cover with a second pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Tomato + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together879 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 release juices that add moisture and tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown as it bakes.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a softer, creamier texture.
Flour
Thickens the juices released by the tomatoes so the filling sets rather than running.

The step that matters

Sprinkling the flour and sugar mixture over the tomatoes. Flour thickens the liquid the tomatoes release during baking. Spreading it evenly prevents both raw floury pockets and loose, watery patches in the filling.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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

More tomato pie recipes

Green 27 See all 35 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes