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Dessert

Mock Cherry Pie

A fruit pie filling made with cranberries, raisins, and sugar, thickened with cornstarch, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Mock Cherry Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine cranberries, raisins, cold water, and sugar.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the mixture begins to bubble.

  3. In a small bowl, mix cornstarch with a little water to create a slurry.

  4. Stir the cornstarch mixture into the fruit mixture and cook until thickened.

  5. Remove from heat and add vanilla and salt.

Bake

  1. Pour the filling into a pie crust and bake according to your pie crust instructions.

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. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

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

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

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cranberries
Provide the tart fruit flavor and bulk of the filling.
Raisins
Add sweetness and soft body to the filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the fruit juices into a glossy, sliceable filling when heated.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the cranberries.

The step that matters

Stir the cornstarch slurry in and cook until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens once it reaches a boil and its granules swell. Stopping early leaves a runny filling, while overcooking can break down its thickening power.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vanilla, sugar. 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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