Name: Mock Cherry Pie
Ingredients: 1 quart cranberries, chopped; 2½ cups sugar (or 2 cups sugar and ½ cup sugar substitute); 1 tablespoon flour; ½ cup water (or 1 tablespoon cornstarch, wet with a little cold water); 1 cup boiling water; 1 cup chopped raisins (optional); Top and bottom pie crusts

Why it works: Flour and raisin 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

1 quart cranberries, chopped
2½ cups sugar (or 2 cups sugar and ½ cup sugar substitute)
1 tablespoon flour
½ cup water (or 1 tablespoon cornstarch, wet with a little cold water)
1 cup boiling water
1 cup chopped raisins (optional)
Top and bottom pie crusts

Directions

Chop the cranberries using a coarse blade of a meat chopper.
In a bowl, combine the cranberries, sugar, flour, and water (or cornstarch mixture).
Add the boiling water and mix well.
If desired, stir in the chopped raisins.
This mixture makes filling for 2 pies.
Prepare with top and bottom crusts.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).