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Tomato Pie

A baked pie of tomatoes, onions, eggs, vermicelli, and a butter‑flour crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. 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.

Make the filling

  1. Parboil the diced tomatoes and onions in 1 pint of water for 5 minutes.

  2. Add 1 oz of butter and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a pie dish.

Assemble

  1. Layer sliced tomatoes and eggs into the pie dish.

  2. Mix in the broken vermicelli.

Make the crust

  1. Combine the flour and 3 oz of butter.

  2. Add cold water to form a dough.

Bake

  1. Cover the pie with the crust.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Tomatoes
Supply the main juicy filling and moisture that cooks down in the pie.
Onions
Add savory aroma and a mild sweetness as they soften during parboiling.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the filling body and structure once sliced in.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the crust its structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that tenderises the crust and helps it brown.

The step that matters

Add cold water to form a dough. Adding only enough cold water and mixing briefly keeps the butter in small pieces. Overworking develops too much gluten, which makes the crust tough instead of tender and flaky.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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