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Dessert

Green Currant Pie

A pie filled with green currants, sugar, flour, currant jelly, and water, baked in a deep crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Green Currant Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line a deep pie dish with the pie crust.

  2. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons sugar and 2 tablespoons flour (or 1 tablespoon corn-starch) over the bottom.

  3. Pour in 1 pint of washed green currants and add 2 tablespoons currant jelly.

  4. Sprinkle with 4 tablespoons sugar and add 2 tablespoons cold water.

Bake

  1. Cover and bake for 15 to 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.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes
  3. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Green currants
Provide the tart fruit that forms the body and flavour of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the currant juices as they heat so the filling sets rather than running.
Corn-starch
Alternative thickener that sets the juices into a glossy filling when used in place of flour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the currants.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and natural pectin to help the filling hold together.
Pie crust
Forms the base that holds the filling in the dish.

The step that matters

Spreading the thickener over the crust. Sprinkle the flour or corn-starch evenly over the bottom before adding the fruit so it mixes into the juices as they heat. Starch needs heat and liquid to thicken, so an even layer helps prevent a runny or lumpy filling.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. 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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