Name: Pie-Plant Pie
Ingredients: Pie plant stalks; Sugar; Water; Flour; Pie crust

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 ↓

Pie-Plant Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

Remove the skin from the pie plant stalks and cut them into small pieces.
Fill the pie dish evenly with the pieces.
Add plenty of sugar and a teaspoon of water.
Dredge a little flour evenly over the top.

Bake

Cover with a thin crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) like an apple pie.

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.

Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pie plant stalks: Provide the tart fruit that forms the body of the pie filling.
Sugar: Sweetens the tart stalks and helps draw out their juice.
Flour: Thickens the juices released by the stalks as the pie bakes.
Pie crust: Encloses the filling and browns as the pie bakes.

“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.