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Tomato Pie

A baked pie with sliced tomatoes, sugar, cream, egg, nutmeg, and a rich crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Tomato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel and slice the tomatoes.

  2. Sprinkle with a little coarse sea salt and let them stand for a few minutes.

  3. Pour off the juice.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add sugar, cream, egg, and nutmeg to the tomatoes.

  2. Cover with a rich pie crust.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for half an 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.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Tomato + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together879 recipes

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

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main filling and fresh tomato flavor once cooked.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the filling a softer, custard-like body.
Egg
Helps bind the cream and tomato filling as it bakes and sets.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes and adds gentle sweetness.

The step that matters

Pouring off the juice. Tomatoes release liquid when salted and standing. If that juice stays in the pie, the filling can turn watery and the crust may go soggy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, egg, nutmeg):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, egg, 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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