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Dessert

Blackberry Pie

A pie with blackberry juice, flour, sugar, eggs, cream, and salt baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Blackberry Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Mix flour with sugar, then add blackberry juice, cream, and beaten egg yolks.

  2. Line a deep dish with thinly rolled pastry.

Bake

  1. Fill the pastry with the mixture and bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is set.

  2. Continue baking at 300°F (150°C) until the filling is thick and firm.

  3. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff, then spread on top and bake until browned.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Blackberry + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together530 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Blackberry + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Flour
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it a firm, sliceable body.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the filling while the whites whip into a stiff, browned topping.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, producing a softer, silkier filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it set with the egg proteins.
Blackberry juice
Provides the main fruit flavour, colour and liquid for the filling.

The step that matters

Continue baking at 300°F (150°C) until the filling is thick and firm.. Egg proteins set gradually as the filling heats. Baking too hot can curdle or puff the custard and leave it weeping, so the lower temperature lets it set smoothly.

Swap the blackberry

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Blackberrythe original

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