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Dessert

Leiuou Molasses Pie

A pie made with molasses, lemon peel, raisins, sugar, flour, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Leiuou Molasses Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pare the lemon and boil the peel, then chop it with the raisins.

  2. In a bowl, mix the sugar, molasses, flour stirred in cold water, butter, and boiling water.

  3. Add the chopped lemon peel and the juice of the lemons to the mixture and combine well.

Bake the pie

  1. Pour the filling into a pie crust and cover with a second crust.

  2. Bake until set and 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

Molasses
Provides the dark color and deep, robust sweetness that defines the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling set into a thick, sliceable texture.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it body rather than a runny texture.
Lemon
Its peel and juice add acidity and aromatic citrus flavor to balance the molasses.

The step that matters

Stirring flour into cold water before adding it. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps and stays grainy. Mixing it smooth in cold water first lets its starch disperse evenly, so it thickens the filling smoothly during baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, molasses, flour, butter. 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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