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Dessert

Mock Cherry Pie

A fruit pie made with cranberries, raisins, and sugar, baked in a double crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mock Cherry 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.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine cranberries, water, raisins, and sugar.

  2. Cook over medium heat for a few minutes until the cranberries burst.

  3. Stir in flour and vanilla, mixing well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the filling into a pie crust and cover with the second crust.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cranberries
Provide the tart fruit flavour and most of the filling's body.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a chewy texture to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the cooking juices so the filling holds together when sliced.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fruit juices form a syrupy filling.
Pie crusts
Form the structure that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
Vanilla
Adds a warm aroma that rounds out the fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and vanilla thoroughly. Flour thickens only when it is evenly dispersed and heated. Unmixed flour forms lumps and pockets of raw starch, leaving the filling uneven or runny in places.

“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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