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Dessert

Raisin Pie

A pie filled with raisins boiled in water, mixed with lemon rind, juice, sugar, flour, and egg, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Raisin Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil the raisins in water until you have about a quart left.

  2. Mix the grated lemon rind, lemon juice, sugar, flour, and egg together.

  3. Stir the boiled raisins into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the raisin mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

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

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

  3. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Raisins
Provide the main body of the filling and a chewy, sweet texture once simmered.
Egg
Helps the filling set and firm up when baked.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when cut.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the raisins and sugar.

The step that matters

Bake until set. The egg and flour thicken the filling as it heats. Pulling the pie too early leaves it runny, while over-baking can make the egg curdle and turn grainy, so watch for the filling to firm up rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, 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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