Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Cranberry Pie
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Pick and wash the cranberries in several waters.
Combine cranberries with lemon juice and sugar in a dish.
Bake and serve
Cover with puff pastry or short crust.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes.
If using short crust, remove from oven 5 minutes before done, ice it, then return to oven until finished.
Serve cold.
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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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 fruit filling that forms the body of the pie.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the tart cranberries and helps soften them as they bake.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
- Puff pastry or short crust
- Forms the crust that covers and encloses the fruit while baking.
The step that matters
Removing and icing the short crust. Timing matters here: icing the crust near the end and returning it to the oven lets the surface set and finish browning without overbaking the fruit beneath.
“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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