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 ↓
Cherry 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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Line a pie dish with the pie crust.
Fill and bake
Fill the crust with ripe cherries.
Sprinkle sugar over the cherries based on their sweetness.
Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of sifted flour over the cherries.
Cover the pie and bake until the crust is 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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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pie crust
- Forms the container for the filling and browns to a golden color in the oven.
- Ripe cherries
- Provide the fruit filling and the juices that the sugar and flour thicken.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cherries and helps draw out their juices for the filling.
- Sifted flour
- Thickens the cherry juices as the pie bakes, so the filling holds together when cut.
The step that matters
Sprinkle sugar over the cherries based on their sweetness. Sweetness varies between batches of cherries. Sugar balances their tartness and, with the flour, affects how thick the juices become, so tasting the fruit first helps set the amount.
“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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