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Dessert

Sour Caeam Pie

A pie with a filling of cream, sugar, egg, raisins, and vanilla baked in two crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sour Caeam Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Add 1 cupful of cream and 1 tablespoonful of flour.

  2. Add 1 cupful of sugar and 1 egg.

  3. Add 2 cupfuls of raisins, flavored with vanilla.

  4. Beat the cream and sugar thoroughly together; then add the egg, well beaten.

Bake

  1. Bake with 2 crusts.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

695Calories
20 gProtein
12 gFat
125 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49

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

By Johnson, Vt. Congregational church. [from old catalog]. 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.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Cream
Provides richness and moisture to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling set smoothly when beaten with the cream.
Egg
Binds the filling and helps it set as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, cream. 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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