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Cranberry Pot Pie

A fruit pie with cranberries stewed in boiling water and topped with biscuit dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cranberry Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and assemble

  1. Butter a porcelain stew pan or kettle.

  2. Sprinkle 1 pint of cranberries with 1 cup of sugar in the pan.

  3. Make a rich biscuit dough and shape it into a ring.

  4. Lay the dough on top of the fruit in the kettle.

  5. Add another pint of cranberries around the dough and sprinkle with another cup of sugar.

  6. Pour 1 pint of boiling water into the center.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover closely and stew steadily for 20 minutes.

  2. Serve on a platter with cream and sugar.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 that softens and becomes a sauce as it stews.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart cranberries and dissolves into their cooking liquid.
Biscuit dough
Forms a soft, cakelike topping that cooks by steaming over the fruit.
Boiling water
Supplies the liquid that stews the fruit and keeps the dough moist as it cooks.
Cream
Adds richness that balances the sharpness of the cooked cranberries.

The step that matters

Cover closely and stew steadily. A tight lid traps steam, which cooks the biscuit dough through while the fruit simmers. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, so the dough can cook unevenly and the fruit can dry out.

“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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