Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Cherry Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Assemble
Line your pie plate with the pie crust.
Fill it half full with the pitted cherries.
Sprinkle the sugar and sifted flour over the cherries.
Dot the mixture with butter.
Fill the crust to the top with more cherries.
Bake
Cover with the upper crust and bake until golden.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
- Pie crust
- Encloses the filling and browns to form the pie's structure and crisp edge.
- Cherries
- Supply the fruit filling, moisture, and a tart flavour.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and balances the cherries' tartness.
- Flour
- Thickens the cherry juices as they heat, so the filling sets rather than runs.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a rounded, buttery flavour to the filling.
The step that matters
Bake until golden. Flour thickens the juices only once the filling heats enough for its starch to swell. If underbaked, the juices stay thin and runny, and the slice will not hold its shape.
“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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