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Ripe Currant Pie

A pie filled with ripe currants, sugar, water, flour, eggs, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Ripe Currant 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a pie plate with a pie crust.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the crushed currants, sugar, water, and flour until smooth.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs and mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into the prepared pie crust and bake until set.

Top and brown

  1. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites until soft peaks form.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar and continue whipping until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pie and return to the oven to 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Currant + flourtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Currants
Provide the fruit flavor and bulk of the filling, with sugar and juice giving it body.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the tartness of the currants.
Flour
Thickens the currant mixture so it sets when baked.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling as it bakes, and whites whipped into meringue give a light, airy topping.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the whites, helping the meringue become stable and glossy.

The step that matters

Bake the filling until set. Underbaking leaves the egg yolks and flour unset, so the filling runs when cut. Baking until just set thickens it fully without overcooking the eggs.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, egg. 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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