Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
English Currant Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Clean the currants carefully and rinse them in plenty of water.
Sweeten the currants and thicken with flour until the mixture is the consistency of rich cream.
Fill the pie crust with the currant mixture and cover with the second crust.
Bake until golden brown.
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 + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Currant + flourtop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,077 recipes
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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,256 recipes
Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Blueberryfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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