Name: Tomato Pie
Ingredients: equal number of ripe tomatoes; equal number of potatoes; 2 tablespoons oiled butter; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; a pinch of thyme; pepper to taste; salt to taste; a few peeled mushrooms (optional)

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Tomato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Slice the ripe tomatoes and potatoes.
Place them in a pie dish and moisten with oiled butter.
Add chopped parsley, thyme, pepper, salt, and mushrooms if using.

Bake

Cover the pie with pastry and bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden 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.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,370 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes: Provide the main filling, releasing juice that moistens the pie as it bakes.
Potatoes: Add body and starch so the filling becomes substantial rather than watery.
Oiled butter: Adds fat and moisture that coat the slices and help the top brown.

Swap the tomato

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

Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Chivefits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, parsley, thyme, pepper, mushroom. 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.