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Dessert

Cranberry Pie

A fruit pie made with cranberries, sugar, water, flour, and a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Cranberry Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the stems from the cranberries and rinse them.

  2. In a bowl, combine the cranberries, sugar, water, and flour; stir well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the pie crust.

  2. Cover with an upper crust and seal the edges.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

  3. Coffee + flourtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cranberries
Provide the tart flavor and the juice that becomes the filling as the pie bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart cranberries and helps draw out their juice.
Flour
Thickens the cranberry juices as they heat, so the filling holds its shape when cut.
Pie crust
Holds the filling in and browns in the oven to form the golden top and base.

The step that matters

Stir the flour evenly into the cranberry mixture. Flour thickens the juice only where it is evenly mixed. Clumps stay raw and floury, and the filling can turn runny or patchy when baked.

“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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