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Dessert

Currant Pie

A fruit pie made with currants, sugar, water, and a crust, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Currant Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the currants

  1. Preheat the oven to 300 °F (150 °C).

  2. Place the currants in a deep pudding dish.

  3. Cover the currants with sugar.

  4. Pour boiling water over the currants.

  5. Simmer in the oven for 30 minutes.

  6. Remove the dish from the oven.

  7. Cool the currants.

Make the pie

  1. Cover the cooled currants with pie crust.

  2. Bake until the crust is brown.

  3. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the crust.

  4. Crush 1 cup of currants.

  5. Mix the crushed currants with 1 cup of sugar.

  6. Beat the yolks of 2 eggs.

  7. Add 2 tablespoons of water to the yolks.

  8. Add 1 tablespoon of flour to the mixture.

  9. Mix the yolk mixture with the fruit and sugar.

  10. Cook the mixture until smooth.

  11. Fill a baked crust with the mixture.

Top and serve

  1. Cover the crust with meringue made from 2 egg whites and 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Brown the meringue in the oven.

  3. Serve cold.

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. Egg + flourtop 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

Egg and flour 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 tart fruit flavour and the body of the filling once cooked down with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart currants and helps draw out juice to form the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set with heat, giving it a smooth, custard-like body.
Flour
Stabilises the filling so it holds its shape when cut rather than running out.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that sets with heat to form the browned meringue topping.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until smooth. Egg yolks thicken only when heated enough to set, but overheating makes them curdle and turn grainy. Cook gently and stir until the filling is smooth and glossy before filling the crust.

Swap the currant

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

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

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