Name: Green Currant Pie
Ingredients: 1 pie crust; 2 tablespoons sugar; 2 tablespoons flour (or 1 tablespoon corn starch); 1 pint green currants, washed; 2 tablespoons currant jelly; 4 tablespoons sugar; 2 tablespoons cold water

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Green Currant 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

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Line a 9-inch pie dish with the pie crust.
Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of sugar and 2 tablespoons of flour (or 1 tablespoon of corn starch) over the bottom.

Fill and bake

Pour in the washed green currants and add 2 tablespoons of currant jelly.
Sprinkle 4 tablespoons of sugar and add 2 tablespoons of cold water.
Cover the pie and bake for 15 to 20 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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,077 recipes
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

Green currants: Provide the tart fruit that forms the filling.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the currants.
Flour: Thickens the juices released by the currants as the pie bakes.
Currant jelly: Adds concentrated currant flavour and pectin to help the filling set.