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Dessert

Grape Pie

A fruit pie made with grapes, sugar, flour, butter, and egg yolk, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Grape Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Separate the skins and pulp of the grapes.

  2. Cook the pulp until soft.

  3. In a bowl, mix the skins with sugar, flour, butter, and egg yolk.

  4. Strain the cooked pulp and add it to the mixture.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the filling into a pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. Beat the egg white and mix in 1 tablespoon of sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue on top of the pie.

  4. Brown the meringue.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Grape + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,028 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Grapes
Provide the main fruit flavor and the juicy filling base.
Egg yolk
Helps bind and thicken the filling as it sets in the oven.
Egg white
Whipped into the meringue, giving the topping lightness and structure.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it sets rather than running out when cut.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the beaten egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Beat the egg white and sugar into meringue. Egg white needs to be beaten until it holds stiff peaks before the sugar is mixed in fully; underbeaten whites weep and deflate, while the sugar helps stabilize the foam.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

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