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Dessert

Kipe Tomato Pie

A tomato pie made with pastry, tomatoes, lemon extract, sugar, and flour.

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 ↓

Kipe Tomato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the pastry as you would for an apple pie.

  2. Slice enough ripe tomatoes to fill the pie plate.

Fill and assemble

  1. Sprinkle a handful of flour over the tomatoes.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of lemon extract and 1 cup of white sugar.

  3. Wet the edge of the bottom crust before covering with the top crust.

Bake

  1. Bake until the crust is golden and the fruit is cooked.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Lemon + flourtop 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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the filling and release juice as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the juices released by the tomatoes so the filling holds together.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the tomatoes.
Pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Thickening the juices with flour. Tomatoes release a lot of liquid as they bake. Flour gelatinises in that liquid and sets the filling; without enough of it, the pie can run and turn soggy.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, 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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