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Dessert

Lemon Pies

A baked dessert made with lemon juice, peel, raisins, molasses, water, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Lemon Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Roll the lemons until soft and extract the juice into a dish.

  2. Remove the seeds and finely chop the peel.

  3. Chop the raisins and combine with the lemon juice, peel, and molasses.

  4. Add a little water and flour to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake slowly to prevent spilling out.

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. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the juice and peel that give the filling its sharp, acidic, aromatic flavor.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, depth, and dark color, and gives the filling its body.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a chewy texture to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when baked.

The step that matters

Bake slowly. A slow bake lets the flour thicken the filling gradually and reduces vigorous bubbling, which helps prevent the filling from spilling out of the pie.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, raisin, 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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