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Dessert

Raisin Pie

A pie filled with raisins boiled in water, sugar, and flour, then baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Raisin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Wash the raisins and cover them with cold water.

  2. Slowly bring to a boil.

  3. Add sugar and thicken with flour mixed with a little water.

  4. While boiling, add a small piece of butter.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into an open pie crust.

  2. Cover with strips of pastry or a full top crust.

  3. Bake for 30 to 45 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Raisins
Provide the main filling body and sweet, chewy fruit flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a set, spoonable filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the fruit.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder, smoother flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Thickening the filling. Flour must be mixed smoothly with a little water before it goes into the boiling raisins, otherwise it clumps. Starch thickens as the mixture boils, so the filling should be kept boiling until it is set before it goes into the crust.

“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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