Skip to main content
Main

Cranberry Pie

A pie with mashed cranberries, sugar, butter, and hot water baked in a pre‑baked crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cranberry Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine mashed cranberries, hot water, sugar, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat until well done.

  3. Remove the mixture from heat.

  4. Mash the cranberry mixture finely.

Assemble and finish

  1. Prepare a pre-baked pie crust.

  2. Pour the mixture into the crust.

  3. Sprinkle powdered sugar on top.

  4. Return the pie to the oven for a few 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.

  1. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cranberries
Provide the tart fruit flavor and the body of the filling as they break down.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the cranberries.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the filling.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat until well done. Cranberries contain pectin and natural acids that thicken as they cook and soften. Cooking until fully broken down lets the filling set properly once cooled, rather than running when cut.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes