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Dessert

Vinegar Pies

A sweet and tart pie made with vinegar, butter, eggs, flour, sugar, lemon flavoring, and water, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Vinegar Pies

Pie crust for 4 pies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar and water; add butter and heat until boiling.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with 1 cup of water and flour.

  3. Once the vinegar mixture boils, stir in the egg yolk and flour mixture until well cooked.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare the pie crusts and fill them with the vinegar mixture.

  2. Bake the pies until set.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites with sugar until frothy, then spread on the baked pies.

  2. Color the froth in the oven until lightly browned.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour 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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the sharp, tangy acidity that defines the custard's flavor.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the filling, and whites form the light topping.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it sets rather than staying runny.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the egg white topping become stable and browned.

The step that matters

Stir the yolk mixture into the boiling vinegar mixture until well cooked. Adding the egg and flour mixture to boiling liquid and cooking it through thickens the filling. If it is stirred in too cold or not cooked long enough, the eggs can scramble or the filling stays thin and does not set properly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, sugar, egg, 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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