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Dessert

Crumb Pie

A pie with a crumb filling made from soaked bread crumbs, sugar, butter, water, vinegar, and nutmeg, topped with pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Crumb 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. Soak the bread crumbs in water for half an hour.

  2. Prepare the pie crust as you would for any other pie.

Make the filling

  1. After soaking, mix in sugar, butter, water, vinegar, and nutmeg.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the pie crust and cover with the top crust.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soaked in water to soften, they form the body of the filling in place of fruit or custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the filling a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Soaking the bread crumbs. The crumbs must soak long enough to soften fully and absorb the liquid. Dry or partly soaked crumbs stay gritty and do not blend smoothly into the filling.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Garlicfits about as well

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