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Dessert

Green Tomato Pie

A savory pie made with sliced green tomatoes, biscuit crust, butter, sugar, flour, vinegar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 368 recipes. Both carry maltol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Peel the tomatoes and remove the stem end.

  3. Line a pie pan with biscuit dough.

  4. Slice the tomatoes very thin and fill the pan heaping.

  5. Grate nutmeg over the tomatoes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add ½ cup of butter and 1 cup of sugar if the pan is deep.

  2. Sprinkle a small handful of flour over the mixture.

  3. Pour in ½ cup of vinegar before adding the top crust.

  4. Bake for 30 minutes and serve hot.

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. Biscuit + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the filling and moisture that cooks down into the pie.
Flour
Thickens the juices from the tomatoes so the filling sets rather than running.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling and helps it taste rounder.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes and vinegar and aids browning.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Pour in the vinegar before adding the top crust. Acid brightens the filling, but the flour must thicken the juices as the pie bakes. Adding everything in the right order and sealing the crust helps the filling set instead of leaking or turning watery.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, butter, sugar, flour, vinegar, nutmeg. 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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