Name: Cherry Pie
Ingredients: 2 cups cherries, pitted; 1 deep dish pie crust; ½ cup molasses; 2 tablespoons flour

Why it works: Molasses and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,429 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cherry Pie

Ingredients

2 cups cherries, pitted
1 deep dish pie crust
½ cup molasses
2 tablespoons flour

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

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
Place the pie crust in a deep dish.

Fill and bake

Add the pitted cherries to the dish.
Pour the molasses over the cherries.
Sprinkle the flour on top.
Bake for 30 minutes.

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.

Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,429 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cherries: Provide the main fruit filling and its tart flavour.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark colour and a rich, deep flavour to the filling.
Flour: Thickens the cherry juices as the pie bakes so the filling sets.
Pie crust: Forms the base that holds the filling and bakes into a crisp shell.

“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.