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Dessert

Blueberry Pie

A fruit pie with blueberries, cinnamon, sugar, and flour filling, topped with a second crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Blueberry 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. Prepare a pie crust as you would for apple pie.

  2. Fill the crust with blueberries.

  3. Grate a little cinnamon over the blueberries.

  4. Sprinkle sugar and flour on top to hold the filling together.

  5. Cover with another layer of pie crust.

Bake

  1. 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. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Blueberries
Provide the main fruit filling and its juicy, tart flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw out juice from the berries.
Flour
Thickens the juices so the filling holds together when sliced.
Pie crust
Forms the structure that encloses the filling and browns during baking.

The step that matters

Sprinkling sugar and flour over the blueberries. Flour must be evenly distributed so it can thicken the juices as they release. Uneven coverage can leave pockets of runny filling or raw flour taste.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. 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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