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Papaya Pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Papaya and lemon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 66 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Papaya 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.

  1. Make a bottom pie crust and bake it at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the beaten eggs, lemon juice, and papaya pulp to the mixture.

  4. Pour the filling into the baked pie crust and bake again at 350°F (175°C).

  5. Whip the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add 2 tablespoons of sugar to make a meringue.

  6. Spread the meringue over the pie and brown it in the oven.

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. Papaya + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Swap the papaya

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Papayathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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