Name: Blackberry Pie
Ingredients: 3 cups blackberries; 1 cup sugar; Pie crust (for top and bottom); Milk (for washing the crust)

Why it works: Sugar and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Blackberry Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

3 cups blackberries
1 cup sugar
Pie crust (for top and bottom)
Milk (for washing the crust)

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Assemble the pie

Line a pie plate with the bottom crust.
Fill with 3 cups of blackberries and 1 cup of sugar.
Wet the edges of the crust.
Cover with the top crust and seal the edges.
Brush the top with milk.

Bake

Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 minutes.

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.

Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Blackberries: Provide the main fruit filling, supplying moisture, flavour and tartness to the pie.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and helps draw out juice from the berries as they cook.
Pie crust: Forms the structure that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

“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.