Name: Pie-plant Pie
Ingredients: one-half teacup white sugar; one heaping teaspoon flour together; half teacup sugar; two eggs; two pies; one-half teacup sweet cream; two crusts

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Pie-plant Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pie

Mix one-half teacup white sugar and one heaping teaspoon flour together, and sprinkle over the bottom crust.
Add the pie-plant cut up fine; sprinkle over this another half teacup sugar and heaping teaspoon flour.
Bake fully three-quarters of an hour in a slow oven.

Alternative filling

Alternatively, stew the pie-plant, sweeten, add grated rind and juice of a lemon, yolks of two eggs, and bake and frost like lemon pie.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

633Calories

20 gProtein

12 gFat

109 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 5 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Flour	1 cup (125g) all-purpose	455
Egg	1 large egg (50g)	78
Cream	1 tbsp (15ml) heavy	51
Sugar	1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated	49
Pie	not in our table	0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Women of the First Congregational Church (Marysville, Ohio). 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. See the original page.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,481 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Flour: Thickens the juices released by the pie-plant so the filling sets rather than runs.
White sugar: Sweetens the tart pie-plant and helps draw out its juices.
Eggs: In the alternative filling, the yolks help set and enrich the custard-like filling.

“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.