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Dessert

Vinegar Pie

A sweet pie made with sugar, butter, egg, flour, vinegar, water, cinnamon, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Vinegar Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the egg and mix well.

  3. Stir in the flour, vinegar, and water.

  4. Add the cinnamon and ginger, and blend until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Bake until firm, about 30 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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Egg
Binds the filling and helps it set firm when baked.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when baked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the texture of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pie its tang.

The step that matters

Bake until firm. The egg and flour set as they heat, so the pie needs to bake until firm in the center. Pulling it too early leaves a runny filling, while overbaking can make it dry and cracked.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, flour, vinegar, cinnamon. 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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