Name: Green Tomato Pie
Ingredients: 4 cups sliced green tomatoes; ½ cup coarse sea salt; 1 pie dough; ½ cup raisins; 1 heaping tablespoon sifted flour; ¾ cup sugar; 2 tablespoons butter; a few drops of lemon juice

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Scald the sliced green tomatoes in salted water for 2 minutes, then drain well.
Line a pie pan with the pie dough and sprinkle the bottom with raisins.
Add the drained tomatoes to the pan.
Sift together the flour and sugar, then pour over the tomatoes.
Dot the filling with butter and add a few drops of lemon juice.
Cover with the top crust and press the edges together.
Wrap a wet cloth around the edge to keep it sealed and retain the juices.

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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,592 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,742 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, flour, sugar, butter, lemon):

Arrowrootfits better
Shallotfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, sugar, butter, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.