Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Strawberry Pie
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the crust
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Bake the pie crust in the oven until nicely browned.
Fill and top
Remove the crust and fill it with fresh strawberries.
Sprinkle the strawberries with finely powdered sugar.
Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Mix the beaten egg whites with sugar.
Spread the egg white mixture over the entire pie.
Bake and finish
Return the pie to the oven.
Bake until slightly browned.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pie crust
- Provides the baked base that holds the filling together.
- Fresh, ripe strawberries
- Supply the fruit flavour and juicy filling at the centre of the pie.
- Finely powdered sugar
- Sweetens the strawberries and dissolves easily into the egg whites.
- Egg whites
- Whipped into a foam that sets into a light, browned topping in the oven.
The step that matters
Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks to hold air and form a stable meringue topping. Under-whipped whites stay runny and slide off the fruit, while overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy.
“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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