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Dessert

Mock Cherry Pie

A pie filling made from cranberries, raisins, sugar, flour, boiling water, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mock Cherry Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Halve and wash the cranberries to remove the seeds.

  2. Mix the flour with the sugar.

  3. In a pot, combine the cranberries, raisins, sugar, flour mixture, boiling water, and vanilla.

  4. Cook until the mixture thickens.

Assemble the pie

  1. Use as the filling for a two-crust pie.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cranberries
Provide the tart, fruity flavor and bulk that mimic cherries in the filling.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it thicken as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the filling as it cooks, giving it a set, sliceable body.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture thickens. Flour starch only thickens fully when heated in liquid until it gelatinizes. Stopping too early leaves a runny filling that soaks the crust, so cook until the mixture visibly thickens before filling the pie.

“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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