Name: Currant Pie
Ingredients: 1 pie crust; 1 cup sugar (or more, depending on the sweetness of the currants); 4 cups currants (fresh or steamed)

Why it works: Sugar and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Currant Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

1 pie crust
1 cup sugar (or more, depending on the sweetness of the currants)
4 cups currants (fresh or steamed)

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).
Line a pie pan with the pie crust.
Sprinkle some sugar in the bottom of the crust.

Fill and bake

Fill the crust with the currants.
Sprinkle more sugar on top of the currants.
Cover with strips of pie crust.
Bake for at least 40 minutes.

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.

Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Currants: Provide the tart fruit that forms the pie's filling and main flavour.
Sugar: Sweetens the tart currants and balances their acidity.
Pie crust: Forms the structure that holds the filling and bakes into a crisp shell.

“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.