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Dessert

Cherry Pie with One Crust

A fruit pie made with cherries, apples, sugar, flour, ginger, and cinnamon, cooked until tender without a top crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cherry Pie with One Crust

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine equal quantities of pitted cherries and chopped apples in a pot.

  2. Sweeten the mixture to your taste.

  3. Add 2 teaspoons of flour, 1 teaspoon of ginger, and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon.

  4. Cook the mixture without a top crust until the fruit is tender.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Pitted cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour and juice, which softens as the filling cooks.
Chopped apples
Add bulk and mild tartness that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juice that forms the filling's syrup.
Flour
Thickens the fruit juices so the filling sets rather than running.

The step that matters

Cook until the fruit is tender. Fruit that is not fully softened stays firm, and the flour may not fully thicken the juices, leaving a runny filling. Cooking until the fruit is tender lets the starch gelatinise and the juices thicken into a stable filling.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, ginger, cinnamon):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, ginger, cinnamon. 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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