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Dessert

Citron Pie

A pie made with citron, sour apples, and sugar, thickened with cornstarch or flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Citron Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the citron

  1. Slice the citron, remove the seeds, and cut into small pieces.

  2. Stew the citron in a granite stew-pan for 2 to 3 hours until very tender and nearly dry.

Make the filling

  1. Cook the very sour apples slowly until soft, then drain off the juice.

  2. Add the apple juice to the citron, sweeten to taste, and thicken with a little cornstarch or flour.

Bake

  1. Fill the pie crusts with the mixture and bake.

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. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Citron
Forms the main body of the filling and gives the pie its characteristic flavor.
Very sour apples
Supply acidity and pectin, and their juice adds liquid and tartness to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sourness of the citron and apples.
Cornstarch or flour
Thickens the juices so the filling sets rather than running out of the pie.

The step that matters

Stewing the citron until nearly dry. Citron is firm and watery, so it must cook long enough to soften fully and lose excess moisture. If filling is left wet, the starch cannot thicken it properly and the pie will be runny when cut.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. 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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