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 ↓
Cherry Pie
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 filling
Scald the pitted cherries in their own juice.
Sweeten the cherries liberally with sugar.
Assemble and bake
Pour the cherries into a deep pie plate lined with the pie crust.
Dredge the top with flour.
Cover with a top crust.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) 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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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
- Cherries
- Provide the main fruit body and juice that forms the filling.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the tart cherry filling and balances its acidity.
- Flour
- Thickens the cherry juices as the pie bakes.
The step that matters
Dredge the top with flour. Flour mixed with the cherry juices thickens the filling as it heats. Without it, the juices can stay runny and soak the crust, so the slice will not hold its shape.
“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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