Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Remove the stems and stones from the cherries.
Place the bottom pie crust in a pie tin.
Fill and assemble
Fill the crust with cherries.
Sprinkle the sugar and flour over the cherries.
Dot with butter.
Cover with the top pie crust and seal the edges.
Cut slits in the top crust to allow steam to escape.
Bake
Bake for 45-50 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.
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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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
- Cherries
- Provide the main fruit filling and its tart flavour.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and helps draw out cherry juices as it cooks.
- Flour
- Thickens the cherry juices into a filling that holds its shape when sliced.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat to the filling, rounding out the flavour.
- Pie crust
- Forms the structure that holds the filling and browns in the oven.
The step that matters
Cut slits in the top crust. Slits let steam escape during baking. Without them, trapped steam can build pressure, lift or split the top crust, and make the filling bubble out unevenly.
“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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