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Dessert

Preserve Pie

A pie filled with preserves, sweet cream, butter, eggs, sugar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Preserve 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

  1. Make a nice crust and line a deep pie tin.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the preserves, butter, and sugar with the flour.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs until light and add to the cream.

  3. Combine all ingredients and mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture into the pie tin and bake at 400°F (200°C) until set.

Finish

  1. Icing with the beaten egg whites and ½ cup sugar, flavored with tart jelly.

  2. Set in the oven for a few minutes to finish.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Preserves
Provide sweetness, fruit flavor, and body to the filling.
Eggs
Set the filling as they cook and add richness; whites make the icing.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the filling.
Thick sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the filling a smooth, custard-like body.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when set.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) until set. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat, turning the liquid filling into a sliceable set. Underbaking leaves it runny; overbaking can make it weep or curdle.

“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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