Name: Mock Cherry Pie
Ingredients: 1 cup cranberries; 1 teaspoon vanilla; ½ cup raisins; ½ cup water; 1 cup sugar; 1 teaspoon butter; 1 tablespoon flour

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mock Cherry Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Chop the cranberries and raisins together.
Add the vanilla, water, sugar, butter, and flour to the chopped mixture.

Bake

Bake with two crusts 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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Vanilla + raisintop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together782 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,241 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cranberries: Provide tart fruit flavor and body that stands in for the cherries.
Raisins: Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and helps it thicken as it cooks.
Flour: Thickens the juices so the filling sets rather than running out of the pie.

“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.