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Dessert

Guava Pie

A pie filled with guava marmalade topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Guava Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pie

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

  2. Fill the pie shell with guava marmalade and bake until set.

Make and bake the meringue

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the baked pie and brown it in the oven.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Guava + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Guava + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into foam that sets into a light, airy meringue topping when baked.
Sugar
Added to the whites to stabilise the foam and sweeten the meringue.
Guava marmalade
Fills the pie shell as a sweet, fruity layer that sets when baked.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whites under-beaten or over-beaten won't hold a stable foam, so the meringue may weep or collapse. Add the sugar gradually so it dissolves and strengthens the foam.

Swap the guava

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Guavathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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