Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Cherry Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the filling
Pit the cherries, saving all the juice.
In a bowl, mix the cherries with sugar and flour until well combined.
Fill and bake
Fill a pie plate lined with pastry with the cherry mixture.
Cover with the upper crust and bake.
Make the pastry
For the pastry, mix lard and flour thoroughly.
Add enough water to make a smooth dough.
Roll the dough thin and refrigerate overnight for best results.
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.
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cherries
- Provide the main filling, along with their juice, which becomes part of the pie's sauce.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the cherries.
- Flour
- Thickens the cherry juices so the filling sets instead of running out when sliced.
- Lard
- Coats the flour particles to keep the crust tender and flaky.
The step that matters
Add enough water to make a smooth dough. Adding too much water develops gluten and makes the crust tough, while too little leaves it crumbly and hard to roll. Mixing only until the dough holds together keeps it tender.
“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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