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Dessert

Currant Pie

A sweet pie filled with mashed currants and a custard-like filling, topped with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 ↓

Currant Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Stir water and flour to a smooth paste.

  2. Add egg yolks and sugar; mix well.

  3. Incorporate mashed currants.

  4. Line a deep pie tin with the crust.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into the crust and bake at 300°F (150°C) until done.

  2. Beat egg whites with sugar until stiff; cover the pie with this mixture.

  3. Return to the oven until 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a custard-like texture as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds together when sliced rather than running.
Currants
Provide the tart fruit flavour and most of the filling's moisture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff meringue that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue whip stiff and glossy.

The step that matters

Returning the pie to the oven to brown the meringue. Meringue needs enough heat to brown without over-baking the filling beneath. Watch it closely, since sugar darkens quickly and the filling can overcook if left too long.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, sugar. 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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