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Dessert

Jelly Pie

A fruit pie with a meringue topping baked in a pastry shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Jelly 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

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

Make and bake the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sugar, butter, and fruit or preserves until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pastry shell and bake until set.

Top and brown

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form to make a meringue.

  2. Spread the meringue over the baked pies and return to the oven to brown.

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 + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set, giving it a rich, custardy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue stay stable and glossy.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture in the filling.
Fruit or preserves
Provides the main flavour and sweetness of the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to form the meringue topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking the filling until set. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves the filling runny, while overbaking can make it weep or turn grainy.

“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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