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Dessert

Pieplant Pie

Pieplant pie is a sweet pie made with pieplant, sugar, eggs, and a pastry crust.

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

Pieplant Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Beat 1 cup of sugar with the yolks of 2 eggs.

  2. Add 1 pint of pieplant and mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

Bake and top

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. Whip the egg whites and add 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  3. Spread the whipped egg whites over the top of the pie.

  4. Return to the oven for a few moments until lightly 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 + 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).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set, giving the pie a custard-like body.
Pieplant
Provides the tart flavor and the bulk of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the tartness of the pieplant.
Egg whites
Whipped and spread on top, they form a light meringue that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Pieplant releases liquid as it cooks, and the egg yolks need enough heat to set the filling. Underbaking leaves a runny center, while overbaking can make the custard weep or turn rubbery.

“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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