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Dessert

Vinegar Pie

A sweet pie made by thickening water, butter, vinegar, flour, sugar, and flavoring.

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

Vinegar Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a pot, combine 1 pint of water, 1 tablespoon of butter, and 1 tablespoon of vinegar.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix flour with ¼ pint of water to create a thick paste.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the pot and cook until thickened.

  4. Sweeten and flavor the mixture to taste.

Fill the pies

  1. Let it cool, then fill pie pans with the mixture.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells and sets when heated with water.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, rounded mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the filling its tangy character.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour mixture until thickened. Flour must be mixed smoothly into a paste first and cooked long enough for its starch to swell and thicken. Undercooking leaves a thin, starchy filling that will not set properly when cooled.

“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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