Why it works: Sauce and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Stack 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.
Prepare the crusts
Prepare enough crust for two pies.
Line four pie pans with the crust.
Prick the crusts with a fork.
Bake the crusts separately at 350°F (175°C).
Stack and top
Cover each baked crust with your choice of sauce or sweetened fruit.
Stack the crusts on top of each other.
Beat the egg white until stiff. Gradually add sugar to the beaten egg white.
Spread the meringue over the top crust.
Brown the meringue in the oven.
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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Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,147 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sauce + eggtop 39% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,895 recipes
Sauce and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 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 crusts
- Form the layered structure that holds the filling between them.
- Egg white
- Whipped into a foam that forms the meringue topping.
- Sugar
- Stabilises the whipped egg white and sweetens the meringue.
The step that matters
Beat the egg white until stiff. Egg white must be whipped until it holds firm peaks; under-beaten or greasy whites will not form a stable foam, so the meringue may weep or fail to hold its shape. Adding sugar gradually helps it stay stable.
“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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