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Dessert

Crumb Pie

A pie made from leftover dough, syrup, sugar, flour, butter, and nutmeg, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Crumb Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the base

  1. Roll the pie dough into a thin sheet and line a pie dish.

  2. Spread syrup over the dough.

Make the crumb

  1. In a bowl, rub together the butter, sugar, and flour until combined.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the pie dish with the mixture and grate nutmeg on top.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Pie dough
Forms a crisp base that holds the syrup and crumb filling.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and a sticky, moist layer beneath the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps bind the flour and sugar into crumbs.
Flour
Gives the crumb its body and structure as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the topping brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Rubbing the butter into the flour and sugar. The butter should be worked in until the mixture is evenly crumbly with no large lumps. Unevenly distributed butter melts unevenly in the oven, and overworking the mixture can make the topping dense and pasty instead of loose and crumbly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, sugar, flour, butter. 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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