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Dessert

Maple Syrup Pie

A sweet pie filled with maple syrup and lemon, baked in a double crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Maple Syrup 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and assemble the pie

  1. In a bowl, mix the maple syrup, lemon rind, lemon juice, egg, and flour until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  3. Cover with the second pie crust, cutting narrow strips to create a lattice pattern on top.

Bake

  1. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Maple syrup + flourtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Maple syrup + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and flour 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

Maple syrup
Provides the main sweetness and the thick, filling body of the pie.
Egg
Helps the filling set and bind as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds together when sliced.
Lemon rind and juice
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the syrup.
Pie crusts
Form the base and lattice top that contain the filling and brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking until the crust is golden brown. The filling is mostly sugar and egg, so it needs enough baking to set. Browning the crust signals that the filling has heated through; underbaking leaves it runny.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Pumpkinfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against maple syrup, egg, flour. 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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