Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓
Dried Fruit Pies
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 the fruit
Wash the fruit thoroughly and soak it overnight in enough water to cover.
In the morning, stew the fruit slowly in the same water until nearly done.
Sweeten the fruit to taste.
Assemble the pie
Roll out the pie crust thinly for both the top and bottom.
Line the pie tin with the bottom crust and fill it half full with the fruit.
Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of sifted flour over the fruit if it is very juicy.
Add enough sugar to sweeten.
Fill the crust to the top with the fruit mixture.
Cover with the top crust.
Bake
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 40 minutes.
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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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Dried fruit
- Provides the main filling flavor and, once stewed, the body of the pie filling.
- Sifted flour
- Thickens the juices released by very juicy fruit so the filling sets rather than runs.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the fruit.
The step that matters
Stewing the fruit until nearly done before filling. Dried fruit must be rehydrated and softened before baking, since the pie's short baking time will not fully soften it. Fully cooking it first also lets you judge sweetness and juiciness, which determines whether the flour is needed.
“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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