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Dessert

Tomato Pie

A sweet tomato pie with flour, lemon extract, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,592 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a pie plate with the crust.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the crust with sliced ripe tomatoes.

  2. Sprinkle flour, lemon extract, and sugar over the tomatoes.

  3. Cover with the top crust.

  4. Bake until the crust is golden and the filling is bubbly.

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. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sliced ripe tomatoes
Supply the juicy filling and the tangy acidity that gives the pie its body.
Flour
Starch that thickens the tomato juices as they heat, so the filling sets rather than runs.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and draws moisture out of the tomatoes, balancing their acidity.
Lemon extract
Adds a bright citrus aroma that lifts the flavour of the tomatoes.
Pie crust
Holds the filling in and browns to a golden, crisp finish in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until the filling is bubbly. Bubbling means the tomato juices have reached a boil, so the flour has enough heat to thicken them. A pie pulled out early, just because the crust has browned, will stay runny.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, lemon, sugar. 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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