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Dessert

Green Tomato Pie

A fruit pie made with green tomatoes, apples, crackers, sugar, butter, currants, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Green Tomato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Chop the green tomatoes and apples together.

  2. In a pot, combine the chopped tomatoes, apples, crushed crackers, sugar, salt, spice, butter, currants, and raisins.

  3. Cook the mixture over low heat for a little while until softened.

Make the pies

  1. Use this filling to make three pies.

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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Tomato + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the main bulk and a tart, sharp flavor to the filling.
Apples
Add body, natural pectin for thickening, and sweetness to the filling.
Crackers
Crushed crackers soak up juices and help the filling hold together.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the green tomatoes.
Currants
Add small bursts of sweetness and chewy texture.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture over low heat until softened. Green tomatoes release a lot of liquid as they cook. Gentle heat softens the fruit evenly and lets the filling thicken without scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, butter, currant, raisin. 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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