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Dessert

Green Tomato Pie

A pie made with green tomatoes, butter, brown sugar, flour, vinegar, spices, and a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Slice the green tomatoes finely and press out the juice.

  2. Combine the tomatoes, butter, and brown sugar in a saucepan.

  3. Let the mixture simmer for 5 minutes.

  4. Dissolve the flour in the vinegar.

  5. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling tomato mixture.

  6. Flavor with cinnamon, spice, and nutmeg to taste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cool the mixture slightly, then pour it into the pie crust.

  2. Cover with a top crust and bake 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.

  1. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the main body and tart flavor of the filling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the filling darken as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the juices so the filling sets rather than running out of the pie.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a smoother, rounder flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling tomato mixture. Flour thickens only when heated in liquid, and it clumps if added as dry powder. Dissolving it in vinegar first and stirring into boiling liquid spreads it evenly so the filling thickens smoothly instead of lumping.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, vinegar, cinnamon, 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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