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Dessert

Green Tomato Pie

A pie made with sliced green tomatoes, sugar, nutmeg, lemon rind, and crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Select good, large green tomatoes just before they begin to ripen.

  2. Scald the tomatoes to remove the skins and slice them into small pieces.

Assemble the pie

  1. Place the sliced tomatoes into a pie tin lined with a thick pie crust.

  2. Sprinkle the granulated sugar over the tomatoes.

Bake and finish

  1. Cover with a thick crust and bake at 300°F (150°C) for one hour.

  2. Season with nutmeg and lemon rind.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon 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

Large green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the filling, supplying moisture and a tart, acidic flavour.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the tart tomatoes and draws out some juice as the filling bakes.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling on the base and top so it bakes into a contained pie.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note that complements the sweet tomato filling.
Lemon rind
Adds bright aromatic oils that lift the flavour and offset the sweetness.

The step that matters

Scald the tomatoes. A brief scald loosens the skins by softening the tissue just beneath them. Leaving the tomatoes in hot water too long cooks the flesh, so it turns mushy and watery in the pie.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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