Why it works: Tomato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,592 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓
Tomato Pie
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Slice the tomatoes very thin and lay them evenly in the pie crust.
Cover the tomatoes with sugar.
Add a little lemon juice or slices of lemon, and sprinkle with grated lemon peel or cinnamon.
Cover with strips of pie crust and bake for one hour.
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.
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Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,592 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Tomato + sugartop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,667 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 (sugar, lemon):
- Arrowrootfits better
- Sweet potatofits better
- Kalefits better
- Tomatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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