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Dessert

Berry Pies

A fruit pie made with berries, sugar, and optional flour, baked with a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Berry Pies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Line a deep plate with pie crust.

  2. Fill with alternate layers of clean fruit and sugar, adjusting sugar based on berry acidity.

  3. If the fruit is very juicy, add 1 tablespoon of flour.

  4. Wet the edge of the lower crust.

  5. Cover with the top crust and press down the edge with a fork.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Berries
Provide the main filling, with natural flavor and juices that set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the berries.
Flour
Thickens the juices released by very juicy fruit so the filling does not run.
Pie crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding flour to juicy fruit. Berries release liquid as they heat, and without a thickener the juices can run out and leave a watery filling. Flour gelatinizes as it heats and thickens those juices, so the filling holds when sliced.

“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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