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Dessert

Strawberry Pie

A fruit pie with a lower crust, fresh fruit, and a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 ↓

Strawberry Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pie

  1. Prepare enough dough for the lower crust.

  2. Place strawberries, peaches, or blackberries in the crust.

  3. Dust a little flour over the fruit and sweeten to taste.

  4. Bake until the crust is done.

Add the meringue

  1. Make a meringue by beating the egg whites and adding 1 tablespoon of sugar.

  2. Pour the meringue over the fruit when the pie is cold.

  3. In winter, use canned fruit or preserved gooseberries.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  4. Peach + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together787 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg whites
Whipped with sugar, they form the meringue topping that gives the pie a light, airy layer.
Flour
Dusted over the fruit, it soaks up juices so the filling sets rather than running.
Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and juice that the flour and sugar help thicken.

The step that matters

Pour the meringue over the fruit when the pie is cold. Meringue placed on hot fruit can weep or slide and turn soggy, so the pie should be fully cooled before the topping goes on.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg. 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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