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Potato and Tomato Pie

A baked pie of boiled potatoes, tomatoes, onions, eggs, and a buttered crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion 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 ↓

Potato and 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 the vegetables

  1. Boil the potatoes in their skins until nearly soft.

  2. Drain, peel, and cut the potatoes into pieces.

  3. Scald and skin the tomatoes. Cut the tomatoes into pieces.

  4. Mix the potatoes and tomatoes in a pie dish.

Make the onion mixture

  1. Roughly chop the onion.

  2. Boil the onion in about 1 pint of water, adding the butter and vermicelli or sago until soft. Add pepper and salt.

  3. Mix the onion mixture with the potatoes and tomatoes. Sprinkle in the thyme. Mix all ingredients well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Quarter the hard-boiled eggs. Place the egg pieces on top of the vegetables.

  2. Mix flour, butter, and enough cold water to form a dough. Cover the dish with the crust.

  3. Brush the crust with egg white before baking. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 60 minutes.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Potato + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the pie and soften into a tender, starchy filling.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that give the filling its juiciness and flavour.
Vermicelli or sago
Thickens the onion liquid so it binds the filling together.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the crust, giving it a dough that holds together when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to both the onion mixture and the crust, aiding tenderness and flavour.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a firm, savoury element to the filling.

The step that matters

Boil the onion until fully soft. Onion cooked until soft becomes sweet and mellow and releases its starch-thickened liquid; undercooked onion stays sharp and the vermicelli or sago may not thicken the mixture properly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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