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Dessert

Old-fashioned Green Tomato Pie

A pie made with green tomatoes, brown sugar, and lemon, baked after a day of slow cooking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Old-fashioned Green Tomato Pie

3 pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut the green tomatoes into pieces the size of a nutmeg before measuring.

  2. In a pot, combine tomatoes, water, brown sugar, and salt. Cook the mixture slowly for a full day.

  3. The next day, drain off all the juice.

Make the filling

  1. Heat the drained mixture.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour until it reaches gravy consistency.

  3. Flavor the mixture strongly with extract of lemon.

  4. Add the cooked tomatoes to the mixture and let it cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare 3 pies using 2 crusts each.

  2. Dot the top crust with bits of butter before baking.

  3. Wait until the next day to bake the pies.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Form the bulk of the filling and supply its tart, fruity body.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the filling and draws moisture out of the tomatoes during the long cook.
Flour
Thickens the released juices into a gravy-like filling that holds its shape when sliced.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, melting over the top crust to aid browning and flavor.
Lemon extract
Adds a bright citrus aroma that offsets the sweetness of the filling.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour. Flour only thickens when it is heated in the liquid and mixed in evenly, so stir it in fully to avoid lumps and a filling that stays runny or pasty.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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