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Dessert

Vinegar Pie

A sweet and tart pie made with vinegar, sugar, water, butter, lemon extract, eggs, flour, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine vinegar, sugar, water, butter, and lemon extract in a stew pan.

  2. Heat until boiling.

  3. Beat the yolks of 5 eggs with 1 cup of water and 2 heaping tablespoons of flour in a bowl.

  4. Once the vinegar mixture boils, stir in the egg and flour mixture, cooking until well combined.

Bake and top

  1. Line 4 pie pans with pastry and fill with the vinegar mixture.

  2. Bake until set.

  3. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, adding a little sugar.

  4. Spread over the baked pies.

  5. Return the pies to the oven for a few minutes to brown the topping.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

Vinegar
Provides the sharp, tangy flavour that defines the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness as they set with heat.
Flour
Stabilises the custard-style filling so it sets smoothly rather than runny.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar and adds sweetness to the filling and topping.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to form a light meringue topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg and flour mixture into the boiling vinegar mixture. Egg yolks and flour must be stirred in while the liquid is boiling and cooked until well combined; adding them to a cooler liquid or not stirring well can leave lumps or a thin, unset filling, since the yolks thicken only when heated and the flour needs heat to gelatinise.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, butter, 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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