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Dessert

Vinegar Pies

A sweet pie made with vinegar, water, butter, eggs, flour, sugar, and lemon flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Vinegar Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar and water with the butter, then heat until boiling.

  2. In a bowl, beat the yolks of the eggs with 1 cup of water and the flour.

  3. Once the vinegar mixture boils, stir in the egg and flour mixture until well cooked.

Bake and finish

  1. Prepare the crust for 4 pies and fill with the vinegar mixture.

  2. Bake the pies until done.

  3. Beat the egg whites with the sugar until frothy, then spread on the baked pies.

  4. Color the froth in the oven before serving.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour 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

Vinegar
Provides the sharp, acidic tang that defines the pie's flavor.
Eggs
Cooked yolks thicken the filling, while whipped whites form the light topping.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture so the filling sets into a spoonable custard.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the sharp acidity of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart filling and helps the egg white topping become glossy.

The step that matters

Stir the egg and flour mixture into the boiling vinegar mixture. Egg yolks and flour must be cooked fully in the hot liquid; adding them too cold or without enough heat can leave lumps or a runny filling that will not set properly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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