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 ↓
Cherry Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Fill the pie
Line your pie plate with the pie crust.
Fill it half full with the pitted cherries.
Sprinkle the sugar and flour over the cherries.
Dot with butter.
Fill the crust to the top with more cherries.
Cover and bake
Cover with the upper crust and bake until golden.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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
- Pie crust
- Forms the structure that holds the filling and browns in the oven.
- Cherries
- Provide the main fruit flavor and juices that make up the filling.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and helps draw juice out of the cherries.
- Flour
- Thickens the cherry juices as they cook so the filling sets.
- Butter
- Adds fat that enriches the flavor and richness of the filling.
The step that matters
Sprinkling the sugar and flour over the cherries. Flour thickens the juices only when it is spread evenly and mixed through the fruit as it heats. Clumps or uneven distribution can leave pockets of raw flour or a runny filling, so spread it across the layer before adding more cherries.
“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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