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Dessert

Cherry Pie

A fruit pie made with cherries, sugar, bread crumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cherry Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pie

  1. Wash and pit the cherries.

  2. Line a pie plate with crust.

  3. Sprinkle the bread crumbs and ½ cup sugar in the crust.

Fill and bake

  1. Add the cherries.

  2. Add the remaining sugar.

  3. Dot with butter.

  4. Cover with the upper crust.

  5. Bake until the cherries are done.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Bread + walnuttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together714 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Supply the fruit filling and its juice, which sets as the pie cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and draws juice out of the cherries.
Bread crumbs
Soak up cherry juice so the bottom crust stays firm rather than soggy.

The step that matters

Bake until the cherries are done. Cherries release juice as they heat, and the starch in the filling thickens only once it reaches a boil. Pulling the pie too early leaves runny filling, while overbaking can dry the crust.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Lima beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, butter. 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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