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Dessert

Mock Cherry Pie

A fruit pie made with cranberries, raisins, sugar, and vanilla, baked in a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Mock Cherry Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine cranberries, sugar, raisins, and boiling water.

  2. Stir in vanilla.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a deep pie plate lined with an under crust.

  2. Top with pastry strips.

  3. Bake until the crust is golden.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cranberries
Provide the tart flavor and bulk that give the filling its cherry-like character.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the cranberries.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.
Vanilla
Adds a warm aroma that rounds out the fruit flavors.

The step that matters

Bake until the crust is golden. The juicy filling keeps moisture flowing into the under crust, so it must bake until fully browned and set. Pulling the pie early can leave a soggy bottom crust.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vanilla. 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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