Name: Tomato Pie
Ingredients: green tomatoes; sugar; ginger; grated lemon peel; juice of 1 lemon; pie crust

Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

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

Boil water and pour it over the green tomatoes, letting them sit for a few minutes.
Remove the skin from the tomatoes and slice them.

Assemble the pies

Layer the sliced tomatoes in deep pie plates, sprinkling sugar and ginger over each layer.
Add grated lemon peel and lemon juice for extra flavor.
Cover the pies with a thick crust.

Bake

Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for about 1 hour.

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.

Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,887 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,592 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together14,054 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 main filling and provide the pie's tart, bulk body.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps draw out juices from the tomatoes.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the tomatoes.
Pie crust: Encloses the filling and forms the baked outer shell.