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Tomato Pie

A baked pie with layers of onion, tomato, breadcrumbs, butter, and mashed potato crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the onions

  1. Blanch the sliced onion and fry it in fat until lightly browned.

Layer the pie

  1. Layer the onions in the bottom of a pie dish, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. Add a layer of sliced tomatoes, sprinkle with breadcrumbs, and dot with butter.

  3. Repeat layers until the dish is almost full.

Top and bake

  1. Spread the mashed potatoes thickly over the top to form a crust, scoring with a fork.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the top is brown.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onion
Softens and sweetens as it browns, adding savory depth to the layers.
Tomatoes
Provide moisture and acidity that flavor the layers as they cook.
Potatoes
Form a thick, starchy crust that holds the layers and browns on top.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the breadcrumb topping brown.

The step that matters

Spread the mashed potatoes thickly over the top. A thick, even layer of potato seals the tomato and onion filling and keeps juices from escaping, so the crust can brown well instead of drying out or leaking.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, butter, potato):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, butter, potato. 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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