Why it works: Tomato and nutmeg work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 879 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓
Green Tomato Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Line a pie pan with the crust.
Place two layers of sliced green tomatoes in the crust.
Sprinkle a little flour over the tomatoes.
Add ½ cup sugar and 2 tablespoons water.
Grate nutmeg over the top and cover with the crust.
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.
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Tomato + nutmegtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together879 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together23,364 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Tomato + sugartop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,667 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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
Swap the tomato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, nutmeg):
- Sweet potatofits better
- Arrowrootfits better
- Parsnipfits better
- Tomatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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