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Fruit Pie

A fruit pie made with lemon, currants, raisins, almonds, and sweetmeats, baked in a custard pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Fruit Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemons and boil the rinds and pulp in 3 to 4 cups of water until the bitterness is gone and the rinds are tender.

  2. Remove the seeds and beat the rinds and pulp to a pulp.

  3. In a large bowl, mix the pulp with the beef suet, currants, raisins, almonds, sugar, citron, brandy, sweet wine, and sweetmeats.

Bake and finish

  1. Prepare a pie crust as for custard pie and place it in a greased pie plate.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

  3. Once baked and cooled, spread a layer of quince marmalade over the crust.

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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a moist, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the filling.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit flavour and chewy texture to the filling.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.
Lemons
Provide acidity and aromatic citrus flavour from the juice and boiled rinds.
Almonds
Add crunch and a nutty flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Boil the lemon rinds until the bitterness is gone. Citrus rinds contain bitter compounds that soften and mellow with prolonged simmering in water. Stopping early leaves the filling tasting harsh and the rind fibres tough.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, beef, raisin, almond, sugar, brandy, wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, beef, raisin, almond, sugar, brandy, wine. 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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