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Dessert

Tomato Pie

A sweet and tangy pie made with thinly sliced green tomatoes, sugar, spices, butter, and vinegar, baked in a deep crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a deep pie pan with the crust.

Fill and bake

  1. Slice the green tomatoes thinly and layer them in the pie pan.

  2. Sprinkle the tomatoes with sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  3. Add the butter in small pieces on top.

  4. Pour the vinegar over the filling.

  5. Sprinkle a little flour on top before adding the upper crust.

  6. Cover with the upper crust and bake until golden.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 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 filling and bulk, softening as they bake into a tender layer.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tart flavor of the green tomatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the filling taste rounded.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the juices released by the tomatoes so the filling sets rather than running.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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