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Dessert

Strawberry Pie

A pie with a pastry crust filled with sugared strawberries and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Strawberry 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.

Make the crust

  1. Make a pastry with flour, salt, baking powder, butter, and enough water to form a stiff dough.

  2. Line a pie pan with the dough and prick it with a fork.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

Fill and top

  1. Prepare the strawberries by sprinkling them with sugar.

  2. Fill the baked crust with the sugared strawberries.

  3. Make a meringue by beating the egg whites and adding the sugar.

  4. Spread the meringue on top of the strawberries.

Brown

  1. Brown the meringue in the oven.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the pastry its structure.
Butter
Fat that keeps the crust tender and flaky by coating flour particles.
Strawberries
Supply the fruit filling, adding moisture, flavor and tartness.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the meringue topping's structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the pastry dough, giving the crust a slight lift.

The step that matters

Brown the meringue in the oven. Meringue can weep or collapse if underbaked or overbaked. Watch closely: the sugar caramelizes and browns the surface while the interior dries and sets, so pull it once the peaks are golden.

“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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