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 ↓
Gooseberry Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Remove the stems and blossoms from the gooseberries and wash them.
Pour boiling water over the gooseberries to cover and let them stand for a few minutes, then drain.
Assemble and bake
Line pie plates with the pie crust.
Fill the crusts with the gooseberries and add ¾ pound of sugar for each pint of fruit.
Dredge a little flour over the top and cover with a lid of pie crust, leaving an opening in the center for steam to escape.
Bake in a preheated oven 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).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Gooseberries
- Provide the tart fruit that forms the filling and gives the pie its acidity.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the tart gooseberries and helps draw out juice to form the filling.
- Flour
- Dusted over the filling to help thicken the juices as the pie bakes.
- Pie crust
- Forms the bottom and top shell that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
The step that matters
Leaving a steam opening in the top crust. Steam from the bubbling juices needs an exit; without a vent the pressure can lift or split the top crust and make the filling leak out.
“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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