Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberry Pie

A fruit pie made with strawberries, rhubarb, sugar, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rhubarb and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 670 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix the sugar and flour in a bowl.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the pie crust with the strawberries and rhubarb.

  2. Dot the top with bits of butter.

  3. Cover the pie and bake until bubbly.

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. Rhubarb + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavor and bulk of the filling.
Rhubarb
Adds tartness that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps draw out juices as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the juices so the filling sets rather than running.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the top of the pie.

The step that matters

Mix the sugar and flour before filling. Flour needs to be evenly distributed among the fruit so it can thicken the released juices. Clumps can leave pockets of raw starch, and an uneven mix can leave the filling runny in some spots and stiff in others.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

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

You might also like

Rhubarb PieRhubarb Pie152 recipesRhubarb MarmaladeRhubarb Marmalade35 recipesRhubarb JellyRhubarb Jelly28 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes